Symmetry
by Feonyx
Summary: The knights face a climactic battle with the Cyclops, the mad summoner finally takes the Sacred Stone, Rennac explains everything and confuses everyone, Franz chews out Seth, and the king has a triumphant return. ::FranzAmelia, SethEirika::
1. A Midsummer Night's Insomnia

**Symmetry**

**Chapter One: A Midsummer Night's Insomnia**

Franz stumbled through the corridor of the Renais knight barracks, not registering in his mind that the room he was heading to was already lit within. He stopped to lean against the wall and yawn, but aside from his behaviour few civilians would have thought he wasn't on duty. Cavaliers don't precisely have sleeping clothes, and in any case Franz had an unusual attachment to his shoulder armor (pauldrons, although he couldn't have formed the word at that moment).

He stepped into the small garrison kitchen, doing a respectable impression of a revenant, saw the other occupant, and instantly snapped to attention, nearly knocking himself out on the doorframe. Someone had definitely gone around and lowered all the ceilings while Eirika and Ephraim were out saving the continent from the rise of the Demon King.

"General Seth!" Franz yelped, saluting badly.

The legendary Silver Knight was sitting at a table, staring at the wall with the sort of patience that Franz usually associated with cats and religious statuary. He had lit the lamps some time ago; he wasn't blinking defensively in the brightness. Sometimes he didn't seem to blink at all, although it was only a few uncomfortable seconds before he noticed the cavalier.

"Ah. Sir Franz," Seth intoned calmly. Franz twitched uncomfortably; he had been properly knighted immediately after King Ephraim's coronation, and still wasn't sure the other veteran soldiers of Renais didn't begrudge him the honour. "You're up late." It was the most obvious possible statement, but it was the thing you had to say when meeting someone unexpectedly in the middle of the night.

"Summer heat," said Franz, sinking back down a bit as the surprise wore off. "I can't stand humid nights."

"Rest is essential to proper service," Seth said, but his words lacked any of the admonition that would have been aimed Franz' way a year ago. Official knights were mostly expected to complete all orders directed to them, and could decide the rest of their lives for themselves.

"Then what are you doing up?" the cavalier asked, wondering if he was really going to find anything here that would help him sleep. Chilled water, perhaps…

"Contemplating," Seth replied. He was being unusually quiet, even for the middle of the night, but at least he had finally smirked – if he couldn't read Franz' mind, he at least remembered the initial nervous thrill of delivering a comeback to a superior officer.

"I've had about enough of that for myself," said Franz. "I don't suppose you could just knock me out for a few hours? Your precision in disabling enemies is legendary."

"Many things about me are legendary," said the paladin, without a hint of arrogance. "The important thing to remember about most legends is that they are not true."

Privately, Franz wondered what rank he would have to attain before adults stopped trying to turn every possible statement into a lesson of some kind. He decided to aim for Supreme High Commander of Magvel Allied Forces and go from there.

"What's in need of so much contemplation, sir?" asked Franz, searching the insulated cupboards. Surely they still had some ice left over from last week, when Lute had lost her temper with the heat wave and cast a half-dozen Fimbulvetr spells in the main courtyard. Apparently she only approved of raging fire when it was under her command.

The silence stretched on for a moment; Franz guessed that Seth was trying to decide how much to tell him. "Nothing that any knight need waste time on," the general said at last.

"Except you?" It was meant as a mild joke, and a reminder that Seth was allowed to speak to others without maintaining the persona of the Silver Knight.

"Especially not me," Seth replied, almost smiling – but if a sigh could contain bitterness, his did. "How do you like the re-formed Knights of Renais, Franz?"

"Like everything else in the kingdom, Ephraim and Eirika seem intent on rebuilding the army better than it ever was before," the cavalier replied dutifully. "With our new alliances in the other countries, we shouldn't have any trouble repelling even another surprise invasion." Some people said that was entirely possible, with Carcino grumbling that it deserved a greater share of the continent. After all, it wasn't nearly the only nation without a Sacred Stone any more.

"True, very true," said Seth. Franz reflected that when the general started repeating himself (and how could something be 'very true', wasn't it one or the other?) something was definitely weighing on his mind. "But I was specifically asking about you. It must be difficult, promoted above your old friends – even above some of your brother's friends – but still too young to be accepted by the veterans. I know you've had some trouble with other soldiers."

"I got them all out eventually," said Franz, shrugging.

"…The soldiers?"

"No, the rabbits. The ones they released in my room."

"Ah. …Good."

"I gave one to Lute for helping me with the rest. Artur made her promise not to cook it, but I've heard it has wings now."

"A powerful addition to our forces, those two are," said Seth. "It certainly makes up for their difficulties meshing with the others."

"I enjoy their company, sir," said Franz. "And the others who travelled with us in Ephraim and Eirika's campaign. There's a bond, even between the ones who aren't friends."

"Indeed. And what of that girl from Grado? The lancer, Amelia."

Franz wondered if it was normal for a person's favourite topic to be one they didn't want to talk about with others. "Haven't seen anything of her for almost two months, sir. She's out on training with the other new recruits."

Seth frowned. "What does she need basic training for? We let Ross directly into the infantry, didn't we?"

"Yes, sir, but he has three advantages," Franz explained. "He has muscles like an ox, his father is the brigade commander, and he's not a girl."

"I see." The paladin's frown deepened. "Rather unfathomable objections, but I see. How do you think she fares, then?"

"Amelia?" Franz hoped Seth didn't notice the way his ears twitched when he had an excuse to say her name. "Basic training isn't anything like the troubles we had battling Grado or the monsters of Darkling Woods. I'm sure she's fine."

* * *

Fifty-three and a half miles away, Amelia staggered in the waist-deep marsh. She caught her balance and looked up to see the sergeant, standing on a patch of dry ground, with his spear sticking into the bog – that was what she tripped on.

"Recruit!" the sergeant barked. "Where is your lance?"

With a sinking feeling not unlike the one her weapon must have felt, Amelia realised that the pack on her back was slightly lighter than it should have been. It was an easy mistake to make, since it usually felt like she was carrying a stunned wyvern.

"Don't know," Amelia gasped.

"I can't hear you, recruit!"

"I don't know, sergeant!"

"What is your weapon, recruit?"

"My life, sergeant!"

"Well, guess what, everyone: tonight, you are a _team_! One soldier's life is everyone's life! Now turn around and form a search chain – we have a lance to find before we make camp!"

It turned out that, with enough care and diligence, marsh can in fact be packed into balls. Several of them splashed around Amelia, along with groans from the rest of the recruits. They whole group turned, and she tried to put her hand on the next soldier's back to form the night-navigation chain, but he shrugged her off. She would have to depend on the occasional projectile to make sure she was still behind the others.

"I said _search_, recruits! Now move!"

* * *

"Indeed," Seth said. "They should return in the next few weeks, then. We must hope she won't have to take the course again."

"She's too good for that," Franz insisted.

Seth shook his head. "Whether from your surroundings or history… or mere tradition… do not underestimate the power of a total lack of support." He looked at Franz' empty glass – the cavalier was now crushing the remaining ice with his teeth. "If that was any help, you should get to sleep. No knight would stay awake all night merely to prove a point."

"I'd still rather be knocked out," the cavalier muttered, rising from the table. "You're certain that two people can't contemplate twice as fast as one, sir?"

"You don't need to call me 'sir', Franz," said Seth.

"Of course… General."

The cavalier was gone before Seth could even roll his eyes. Even with his best friend from the war away on training, and with the heat of summer that even Seth sometimes found insufferable settling onto Renais, Franz was an upbeat protector of the kingdom. In the paladin's estimation, he had good reason to be, and in particular would never face the dilemma Seth had right now.

In the knightly service, Seth was held in great esteem and had a certain level of what might be called honorary nobility – he was an ordinary citizen, but at the top of the only civilian hierarchy that most nobles cared about. He was a known hero of war, and welcome in the upper social circles, or strata, or whatever shapes they were forming now. Cumulonimbus, for all he knew.

But knights were also expected to hold to their duty above all else; that was the source of the respect they earned. Nobles liked to see people willing to die to protect them, especially if those people survived to do it again. And civilians liked the people who did all the fighting and let them get on with their lives. Seth was very good at both, but it meant he could never truly be in either group. Technically, a civilian could rise to nobility through a king's proclamation or noble marriage, however rare it might be. Seth could not rise to the upper levels as a knight, when he was expected to give his life for his country, but if he resigned, he would lose any respect that might have helped him be elevated.

So he knew he had to stay where he was. The people of Renais depended on the legendary Silver Knight. He would not cast it aside for anything… excepting one. And there was no way to those royal heights for him, so he would do the only thing he could, and be the loyal protector of Princess Eirika for the rest of his life.

And on nights like this, when the air was too thick to breathe comfortably, he would stay awake – lie in bed, or find an empty room like this one, or walk the battlements of the castle – and remember that one desperate ride, when he had been allowed to hold her as he wished.

He would stay until the sun rose, then put out the lamps, and return to his duty.

* * *

Charcoal scraped across paper in quick, sweeping strokes as Forde added shadow and depth to his sketch. He enjoyed these night watch shifts, if only because he had little other time for artistic pursuits these days, with the entire continent rebuilding itself and capable leaders in great demand. Technically, he was supposed to be keeping a careful watch of the horizon at all times, but between occasional glances through the barred window and all the other soldiers on watch, he felt he deserved the extra leisure. Not that he needed an excuse – he was all too famous for painting in the middle of major combat, although the story about killing a Gwyllgi with his #8 brush was certainly a reputation-booster.

_Thunk, thunk, thunk._ Someone was knocking on the guard tower door from outside the castle. How completely bizarre. Forde set aside his rendition of the Third Battle of Hamill Canyon, in which a careful observer would find what appeared to be Vanessa in four different places, slaying a slew of the sorts of monsters that ate buildings to get at the things inside faster.

The paladin set aside his brush, selected his favourite steel blade, and unlocked the door. The figure on the other side made no sense for an entire host of reasons. "Rennac?"

"Forde, my friend, it's good to see you," said the rogue in a rush. They had got on well from the start, having much the same views on life and how to enjoy it.

"What are you doing here? Escaping Queen L'Arachel again?"

"I have bad news," Rennac explained. He seemed jittery, suggesting to Forde that the Carcino merchant-prince had broken his vow of foreswearing coffee again. "Is anyone else here?"

"No, I volunteered to work this shift alone," said the paladin. "What's the problem?"

"I've been hired by your enemies," said Rennac, and his fist introduced Forde to a world of blackness.

* * *

Ephraim and Tana lay motionless on their bed, staring at the ceiling. "My great-great-great grandfather was a military genius and architectural idiot," said Ephraim.

"Maybe the climate was different back when he had Castle Renais built," Tana suggested.

"That doesn't excuse putting the royal bedchambers directly above the boiler furnaces," Ephraim stated fervently.

"Something should definitely be done about those," she agreed.

"Or to them," said Ephraim.

"Like Vidofnir."

"And Siegmund."

"We could sleep in the courtyard fountain."

"Can't. Not kingly."

"_I_ could sleep in the courtyard fountain."

"Not queenly."

"Neither am I. Watch, I'll challenge you to a pillowfight."

A rather clumsy clunk at the door suggested that someone was trying to determine how to knock without actually being heard, lest an annoyed warrior be awakened down the hall and decide to fan himself off by hurling tomahawks.

"Did you order a glacier from northern Rausten?" asked Ephraim, hopefully.

"I would have, but the ink melted off the requisition form," said Tana, rising to her feet. "I'll get the door."

"I'll keep the blankets warm." Ephraim closed his eyes and tried to think of the biting winds of storms and the blizzards he had sparred in with Innes when they were younger. It would have been strange to think that his childhood rival in all things was now his brother-in-law, but he didn't think about that because it took time away from imaging stingingly frosty autumn rain.

From the other room came a drawn-out _crrrrack_. Apparently the hinges weren't doing well in this heat either. He'd have someone in to work on them in the morning, if all the skilled artisans hadn't been incapacitated by heat-stroke. Those workshops of theirs had to be at least as bad as this, especially the ones that did their own smithing.

"Tana?" Ephraim called. What could be the matter? He forced himself to sit up, and caught a whisper that was slightly louder than it was meant to be.

"There, see? One down, one to go; I told you." Definitely not Tana.

"Who's there?" Ephraim demanded, wondering where the nearest lance was. It didn't much matter – a slithery sound drew his eyes to the doorway, and a sight that had been perfecting its hideousness for almost a thousand years. _Crrrrack!_

* * *

A few solid kicks turned the dew-laden tree into a localised rainstorm, as well as being a quick way to rouse all the recruits who had thought it would make good shelter. Amelia groggily recalled, as the branches drenched her to wakefulness, that she had been the first to think of it, and her choice had been copied by the others. There was no chance that this wouldn't mean trouble for her soon enough.

"Rise and shine, ladies!" the sergeant shouted. He noticed that, for the first time in his career, this accurately described one of his recruits. "And… uh… gentleman?" He shook it off. "It is another _beautiful_ day in the infantry! I _love_ the infantry! _You_ love the infantry! We will have a _fine_ governmentally-funded meal! It is _healthy_! _You_ are healthy!"

Amelia was willing to concede that, once the sun rose and they could see more than ten feet away, it might indeed be a beautiful day. The events that would fill it, if they were anything like the last month of this field training, were likely to be less enjoyable.

"I said _rise_, recruits! Do we remember what that means?"

"We were out searching the swamp until past midnight, sir," one recruit protested.

"_Do-not-call-me-sir-I-work-for-a-living!_" the sergeant screamed, a blitz of reprimand so fast it was practically a single word.

"Yes, sergeant!" the recruit agreed instantly.

Amelia ignored the loud whispers and outright offences aimed at her by the others, and hopped over their outstretched feet without obviously noticing as she re-packed her ridiculous rucksack. She had checked when it was first issued – when empty, Amelia herself could fit inside the bag. Why on earth was it necessary to haul about all this gear? Generally speaking, an inventive soldier could solve any problem with the right use of a lance; thankfully, she had recovered hers at last, and it hadn't gone missing in their few hours sleep.

"This morning we will be marching to the Grado border southeast of our beloved Castle Renais! It will be an invigorating twelve miles, and the corporal has informed me that we may be relieved of some of this heat by hurricane conditions!" The sergeant's eyes glittered gleefully. "Breakfast one hour past dawn, recruits! Form ranks of two and… _march_!"

Amelia sighed and started trudging down the path. She stumbled on a tree root that had been wrenched slightly out of the mud by a careful kick somewhat up the line, but managed not to domino-topple half the group like last time. _Whatever you're up to, Franz, I hope it's better than this._


	2. Holding Pattern

**Symmetry**

**Chapter Two: Holding Pattern**

Despite the sergeant's proclamations, it wasn't the most beautiful day in the infantry that Amelia had seen. She was starting to feel that she had seen entirely too many of them so far, especially out in the wilderness, and it had only been a little over a month since they set out from the main camp. Since then, she had built shelters in rain, sharpened swords in the dark, drawn maps in fog, built fires in gale-force winds, and sparred in all of those conditions, as well as a mudslide. Before, during, and after a mudslide, in fact.

Somehow, everyone else still seemed to be operating under the impression that she had lost fairly.

Today, because the swamps of the past two days were known to contain any number of parasitic bugs and the like – Amelia didn't know if leeches were bugs or fish, and was okay with never finding out – they had been given a free hour to bathe in the river. Naturally, the universe had noticed this rare mercy, and responded by banishing the previous night's sauna-like heat with overcast skies and cold winds that drew immensely complex ripples across the water's surface.

Something that almost no one realises when they need to about rivers is the way they shape a forest, especially a thick one. The river's surface is definite but flexible, and the trees to either side crowd in to tap the water, which means that any river is essentially a long corridor for echoes to bounce down. Even around a bend in the stream, Amelia could hear the others in her group talking, when mad splashing didn't override everything else.

"I can't believe she's still here."

"It's not like she's good at anything that matters, anyway. If she really was part of King Ephraim's company, she was probably the cook."

"Maid!"

"Seamstress!"

Amelia eyed her lance on the shore, and briefly wondered what she might be able to sew together by tying a rope to the end of it. That might be one way to get them to shut up.

"Has she won a single match?"

"She beat Daber."

"Pff. Like that's saying anything."

"Hey, it's not my fault the rock I was standing on came loose!"

"I got her off her feet in less than a minute, in the first week. Some fighter she was."

She recalled that battle. It had been on an icy slope halfway up one of the Renvall mountains, and during a windstorm that kicked the frost up into a thin blizzard. No one had really won a single match that time, considering that everyone had slipped up before they were even supposed to rotate partners for the first time, and the sergeant had relented. After all, it had been almost three hours past midnight.

Since then, Amelia had to admit, she didn't have a stellar record. This was the final training course for junior soldiers, and some of them really did have skills, so she lost to the better ones and barely overcame the less-talented. What was coincidental to the point of suspicious is that it seemed to Amelia she always had the low ground, the unstable footing, and the worst visibility.

"Anyway, she hits like a girl."

"_Duh_, idiot."

"No, I mean, hasn't anyone noticed that that's one of those things you say? I mean, it's built into the language already, so why hasn't the sergeant caught on? What kind of a soldier could she ever be?"

Amelia sorted and repacked her rucksack while her towel dried in the wind, which was a good metaphor for the sorting and repacking going on in her head at the same time. Memories of the weeks travelling with Eirika and Ephraim seemed painfully distant, both in hours and miles, to the point where she wondered if she was imagining parts of it herself. True, she hadn't exactly torn Valter from his mount and nailed him to the door of Jehanna Palace, or slain a Dracozombie with nothing but a sharp branch and a ball of yarn, but…

Certainly she hadn't imagined her friends. Neimi – not so much Colm – Ross, Ewan and Tethys, and General Duessel… and Franz, the one who had rode out of a cloud of dust in the middle of a chaotic, confusing battle and _somehow_ talked her into switching sides without a moment's hesitation on either part. Amelia always thought it was luck that he hadn't come at her with his sword swinging, but maybe she just hadn't looked like she was worth the effort. Practically a civilian, armed and armored or not…

Maybe she had gone through that whole Demon King ordeal without making any progress. She certainly wasn't getting anywhere out here; it was just day after day of the same thing, running without direction and fighting without learning anything. Nothing had actually _happened_ to her in all those months, and nothing worthwhile was going to happen for a long time yet, Amelia had no doubt.

She heaved the rucksack onto her back and turned to march back into the woods – but her way was blocked by a little crowd of the other recruits, all looking appropriately smug about their superiority. The one at the front had the particular look of a leader about him, and was passing his lance from hand to hand with idle ease.

"Isn't it about time you got kicked out, one way or another?"

* * *

Was he ever going to get anywhere?

Seth thought that he had settled his mind on the matter the night before, and wouldn't have to have the same internal argument again for weeks, but something new was bothering him, and it wouldn't go away so easily. There was a hush over the castle that morning, brought on by the thickness of the moisture-laden air and the clouds overhead. All the world seemed to be encouraging a subdued day, and since the king and queen hadn't emerged to give any directives, Seth was content to let the weather have its way. He patrolled the corridors himself, doing a thorough inspection of the restored Castle Renais.

At least he was trying to convince himself of that much. In truth, Princess Eirika was in his every thought again, and there seemed to be no escape. The facts remained clear – to a knight, duty was everything, more important than wishes, feelings, or his very life. To abandon being a knight would be to abandon who he had been for almost twenty years.

And to cling to being a knight, in this castle, in this place, with his duties, would kill him from within. Slowly, yes. But completely. And inescapably.

As hard as it would be, he had to go to Eirika and tell her – no. Not everything. Enough. Tell her that he felt he needed to be somewhere else, request to be placed on monster patrol in the northwest or assigned to the reconstruction of Grado. It was in the nature of love that Seth never wanted to stop caring for his lady, but perhaps over time he could let it drift to the back of his mind, let her smile be a treasured memory and nothing more, nothing that would split him in two to demand that he cast all else aside and go to her or forbid even a word of it to be spoken…

Fortunately for Seth, no one in Renais held that rarest of magical gifts, the ability to hear and interpret the thoughts of others, or else he would likely already have been locked in a secure room with no sharp objects. He wasn't insane, of course, but nothing in his life had ever affected him like this before.

The unnerving rants that ran through his head were interrupted by a clatter and crescendo of falling metal that echoed up the stairwell from the armory. Duty asserted itself and he descended so quickly you'd have thought he fell down the stairs – if anyone else was up on this calm morning, they certainly hadn't been assigned to muck about with the plate mail reserves.

The clatter of metal continued until Seth reached the bottom and demanded to know who was in there. Helmets, armor, and lances had spilled across the floor, but the room was otherwise empty. …More accurately, the room was trying to _look_ like it was empty.

"Come on, out where I can see you! Who's there?" Nothing happened except for one last helmet losing its stability and tumbling down to spin on the stone floor. Seth stopped it with his foot. "…Recruit O'Shaughnessy?" he asked, letting suspicion into his voice.

"I'm here, sir!" someone unseen replied in a high voice. "But I'm a bit stuck…"

Seth sighed. "All right, thank you – look, I know for a fact there _is_ no Recruit O'Shaughnessy; I just made the name up. So whoever you are, you might as well show yourself."

Five mercenaries who could have been finalists in a disreputability pageant leapt out from behind weapons racks and armor chests, all of them carrying broadswords. If they were dismayed that no surprise registered on the paladin's face, they didn't show it.

"All right, mister shiny knight," said the one that Seth had tagged as the most likely leader. He had the sort of collection of scars that made people not want to even think about challenging him, because each one was a reminder that, for example, he had won fights _after_ his left arm was slashed open from shoulder to elbow. "We've got you outflanked and you're unarmed, so it's in your best interest to close your eyes and take your fatal beating like a man. No reason to make this go on any longer than it needs to."

Seth nearly smiled. He disagreed on every point, but there was one that even a brigand should have caught onto faster than this. "Unarmed? This is an _armory_." The Silver Knight spun quickly to deliver a devastating punch to the sixth mercenary, who had been sneaking up behind him. When that one crumpled senseless to the floor, he grabbed a steel blade from the rack – a new one, its edge was straight and gleaming – and faced the others again.

The leader snorted his dismissal of the one-hit knockout, but shifted his stance uneasily. "You think you scare us?"

"Not yet," Seth replied, and lunged.

Naturally, his first swing was deflected easily – the man had seconds to see it coming – but Seth twisted his torso to conserve its momentum, glided off the blocking sword's edge, and struck home on the first foe to his right. They had him surrounded quickly, but as a long-time melee warrior, Seth knew that it was awkward to fight in a group against one target. Manoeuvre was out of the question, so it was really just a question of trying to swing on an angle that the foe wouldn't expect and not chopping any bits off your comrades.

Seth, in contrast, had no comrades, and so could feel free to be a dervish of unrestrained mayhem. When one of his strikes was blocked, he simply reversed and let his sights fall on a different target. Seth had to put more effort into blocking; to save any time he had to strike with enough force to knock the weapon away instead of just halting its momentum, and with five attackers, a fair number of blows were landing on his armor anyway.

In a somewhat un-paladinish move, Seth kicked out hard and sent one of them tumbling into the shelves, which then rained gauntlets on him. Another went down, this time dead, after he let his guard down in surprise. With a swing-block-feint-grab-_yank_, Seth managed to get two of the remaining mercenaries' swords locked together at the hilt, and took the free moment to slam the pommel of his own weapon onto the third one's head.

The second-to-last fell after a series of smacks with the flat of Seth's blade reduced his arms to numb jelly, leading to another knockout punch, leaving only the leader standing.

"This doesn't have to keep going," Seth offered.

The brigand grinned maliciously. "Agreed." He body-slammed Seth, who would have easily taken the impact, except that when he braced himself, he stepped on a fallen gauntlet and lost his balance. Seth crashed onto his back, and the mercenary leader charged with his sword held high, ready for a berserk overhand cut.

Seth, who knew a bad attack when he saw one, raised his blade and let the man run himself through. As the brigand toppled to one side, thoroughly dead, Seth searched his emotions. He hadn't felt any satisfaction in that, had he? Obviously he was glad to have protected the castle from whatever this band had been plotting, but he hadn't enjoyed killing either of those two, had he?

He hadn't let his frustration drive him to take life that he didn't have to, had he?

Seth noticed the blood staining the clothes of the first he had killed, and felt a distant regret. They had intended to kill him, certainly, and so had waived any rights to protection from his sword, but Magvel had seen enough killing in the last year to last it a century. The paladin let out a sigh of relief. Yes, he would have preferred a peaceful solution. Yes, he was in control of himself.

Seth cleared out a small closet, once used to stockpile pennants and standards for jousting tournaments, and locked in the surviving thieves – or whatever they were. The void left by the dissipation of his battle-fury was looking to drag him down into a melancholic quagmire, and he fought back by not thinking about it. For the protection of Eirika, King Ephraim, and all those of Castle Renais, he had responsibilities to meet.

And now, curiously, those responsibilities required him to calmly meet with the woman he could never be close to, and act as if he were no one but a knight. The Silver Knight.

So be it.

* * *

Franz staggered down a dim corridor for the second time in twelve hours. This time, rather than pure blackness, the inside of the castle was illuminated in a faintly ethereal way by the scattered light from hazy skies, and he was on his way to report to General Seth. No one else in his garrison seemed interested in getting up, by which he meant they had half-heartedly hurled a variety of objects more-or-less in the direction of the door when he suggested it.

"Oh, come on," said Franz, seeing the crumpled knight crouched against the wall at the nearest intersection. "Hot nights making it hard to sleep are one thing, but falling asleep on patrol is ridiculous." He stomped loudly up to the guard, expecting a panicked hurry to get back to his feet (which would last until he saw that it was 'Forde's little brother' approaching, rather than someone important). What he _got_ was absolutely nothing.

He kicked the guard's foot lightly. "Up, already." …Something seemed strange about what had just happened. Franz kicked the same foot again, and noticed that it didn't budge. Few people are tense enough to keep their entire body rigid while asleep. Then he noticed the trickle of blood coming from a gouge in the knight's cuirass. Franz dropped to his knees, looking to the man's face to see if he was still alive – and anyone who hadn't been to the heart of Darkling Woods might have screamed.

Slowly, as someone who expects to feel needle-like fangs stabbing into some part of their body at any moment, Franz stood up. "Either the stonemasons are getting very, very strange ideas about modern art, or something very, very evil is inside the castle." The knight was stone. In fact, now that Franz looked closer, all his armor had been petrified as well. In the low light, it hadn't looked too different from the usual steely grey. "And what I do now," Franz said slowly, "is find General Seth."

_Hhhsssrrrshshshshrrrrshsh…_ It was a complicated sound, the sort of sound shadows ought to make as they slide across the ground in a time-elapse movie, and as Franz spun wildly he discovered that he had no idea where it was coming from. There were halls in all four directions, and they branched off into other halls that connected again to the point where he felt that he was at the centre of a large hollow net. The liquid hiss echoed again all around him.

Franz knew the feeling that someone, somewhere, was watching him. This wasn't it. This was the feeling that _everything_ was watching him, and slipping back into hiding just as he turned its way. Even the bloody _doorknobs_ were watching him. Franz had his sword with him, luckily – the petrified guard's sword was granite and probably fused with its scabbard – but he didn't feel like fighting anything that could use Stone magic, or whatever had happened.

For that matter, armor probably wasn't any good against that sort of magic, either. Trying to keep a constant watch in four totally different directions, Franz slipped off his armor, including his favoured pauldrons and the plated boots, leaving them all stacked neatly by the stone guard. Another thought occurred to the cavalier, and he grabbed a pauldron. The guard's helmet would have been better, but it was stone and stuck to him.

Sure that no one was watching at that exact moment, Franz threw the curved piece of armor underhand down one hall, and dashed quietly in the other direction. The padding of his socks on the stone was completely drowned out by the clattering roll of the armor – and underneath it, the sound of a horrible slithering getting much more excited. Resolving not to look back, Franz ran until he reached a door to the battlements and got safely outside.

It wasn't a bad day, compared to the killer heat before. The sky was bright white-grey, the wind had a hint of mist on it, and the mock-orange in the courtyard was blooming, filling the warm air with its aroma. The malicious intruders in the castle were really the only downside. Franz wondered where he would find Seth, and realised that he could hear familiar voices on the air. Seth and Eirika, no doubt in the princess's upper-level garden. Well, he could get there without going back inside. He would just have to make sure not to pay attention to any of the words they exchanged, no doubt laden with subtle romance and radiating passionate –

* * *

"Good morning, Seth," said Eirika, staring out into the hazy plains.

"Your highness," said Seth. That was as formally as he could address her. She didn't correct him.

"What's the state of the castle?"

"Reconstruction is nearly complete, the people are well, the knights are ready, and your br– the King and Queen are not yet risen," he reported.

"That's understandable," the princess stated. "Isn't it a beautiful day?"

Seth nodded, the universal knight gesture for 'Whatever you say also happens to be my opinion'. "M'lady."

"So."

"Yes, your highness?"

Silence. The mist glimmered as the sun took another run at breaking through, but eventually gave up.

"I assume you had something in mind, coming up here?" she asked stiffly.

"Yes, princess. A minor incursion into the castle armory this morning. Six men, two dead and the remaining four currently locked away. They were not well-trained, and I doubt it is a sign of further upcoming attacks."

"You dealt with them."

"Yes."

An odd expression crossed her face. "Are you… injured?"

Seth kept himself as neutral as possible. "Not to any noteworthy degree." The princess was eyeing his abdomen… ah, yes. Where Valter the Moonstone General had gouged him during the fall of Castle Renais. "I'm ready for any assignment, princess."

"Of course. Well. Place the intruders in the castle dungeon until the king is prepared to deal with them. Take a few of the knights with you; I wouldn't want anyone to get hurt unnecessarily."

Heralded by the frantic slapping of his feet on the stone stairs, Franz rose into view among the roses. "That may be difficult, Princess."

She grinned wryly. "They're that hard to rouse, are they?"

"Franz, why aren't you wearing your armor?" Seth asked.

"No, your highness – and sorry, sir, but I do have reasons – there's been some kind of attack. Something in the castle is petrifying the guards. As in 'turned to stone'. I think I barely escaped."

Eirika looked to Seth. "It seems there was more to your thieves than you expected."

"It could still be unrelated, but I doubt that," Seth agreed. "We should secure the castle and ascertain precisely what number of intruders have entered, and how they… how… oh, by Latona…" The sun had made a final almighty push and swept away the enduring fog around Castle Renais, essentially lifting a veil that had been covering the courtyard below them.

It was full of soldiers, none of them Renais.

"It's the princess!"

"_Fire_, already!"

A wave of arrows sprang up from below, but too slow to catch Seth off guard – he pulled Eirika away from the edge of the garden at the same time that she tried to roll, resulting in both of them crashing safely into a peony as arrows rained randomly around them. The peony was less thrilled, but it did survive. Franz had flattened himself underneath a wooden garden bench, which did take a couple of hits, but withstood the test of battle. After a few moments the attack ceased; possibly someone in charge had realised they didn't want to alert the knights who hadn't been petrified yet.

"…Your highness?"

"I'm fine," she insisted, trying not to hyperventilate. Eirika had seen undead warriors, giant spiders, and three-headed demon wolves come at her out of the fog, but 'thirty glinting arrow points' was a new one. "What do we do?"

"My first responsibility is to your well-being," said Seth, matter-of-factly. "And to King Ephraim. We must locate his majesty, then…" It occurred to the paladin that this situation had disturbing similarities to the invasion by Grado, except that there was no heroic prince left to assume the throne. In that moment he vowed not to leave the castle under any circumstances.

"Why do you sound like you're on the defensive? This is Castle Renais!" Eirika protested.

"Yes, princess, but a huge portion of our army is out on training exercises. The remaining troops are only enough to maintain a light guard patrol and a military escort if the king needs to travel," said Seth. "And we must assume that the intruders have already begun neutralising what knights we had."

"I'll go, sir," said Franz, crawling halfway into the open. "I've ridden through blockades bigger than whatever this lot might have put together. I'll contact the knights in the surrounding countryside – we can lay siege to our own castle and crush them from all sides."

"If I'm protecting the princess, I can't assist you on your way to the stables, and if you don't make it through safely, we will be left waiting for reinforcements that will never arrive in time," Seth pointed out.

"I can take care of myself," Eirika stated icily.

"I will not abandon my duty," Seth replied.

"…I've noticed."

Franz, still wondering if a second wave of arrows was going to rain down on their heads at any moment, looked from Seth the Baffled Knight to Eirika the Ice Queen. "So what do we do?" he asked, trying not to sound exasperated in front of the princess.

Eirika turned to her usual, softer commanding persona. "Go quickly, Franz, and be careful. We'll be waiting for your return with the Knights of Renais, and show them the error of turning against the king."

Seth nodded his agreement, and Franz scrambled to his feet and to the nearest entrance to the inside of the castle. He was running through the things he would need – he'd have to get equipment from the stable armory, take the southern tunnel to avoid being spotted, then find the nearest training group to inform them of the situation and request their help in contacting the other knights…

…Actually, wasn't the nearest group the green recruits under Sergeant Faval?

* * *

"What's that supposed to mean?" Amelia demanded. "How are you going to get _me_ kicked out?"

"We don't want you here," Narshen declared. "So whether you have to get battered around like a tetherball, or if you'll go quietly, or if we've got to tell Faval about how you, let's say, sprang an ambush on Alec in the woods, you're going home, all right? We worked to get here. You're just some kid who hung around the king while _he_ saved the world."

They would never change, Amelia realised. No matter how long she worked, facing the same trials and hardships they did – not even counting her time in Ephraim's army – she would never be welcomed by this lot, and they would never want her around. She had been working at it for weeks nothing had changed in the slightest.

"Pick up your lance, brat," the recruit snapped at her. "As fun as this is going to be, I'd rather get it over with."

"_Sergeant!_" Amelia shouted.

"You heard the man, recruits, grab your lances," said Sergeant Faval, emerging from behind a giant tree. "And pair off; we're doing a little sparring before we get back on the march." The darker side of Amelia rather liked the unwell green that her antagonist turned while he wondered how long the sergeant had been lurking there.

"Sergeant," said one recruit.

"Yes, Alec?"

"There's an odd number of recruits, remember? Someone has to rotate out."

In Amelia's opinion, Faval had a very limited sense of humour, but he apparently found something in this amusing. "I don't see why, recruit." He gestured at a cluster of them "You four, you'll work with her."

"Me?" Amelia blurted. Always the same, stacking things against her.

"I don't understand," said Narshen.

"Imagine my shock, recruit." Some of the others – the ones who considered themselves to be at a safe distance – laughed. "Terrain, weather, and force size are not fair-minded. Do you know what it means when you're short of everything but the enemy? It's means you're in combat, recruit. If she wants to win, then she'd better get some better muscles. Everyone ready? Good. Go!"

The four of them rushed Amelia before she had even taken a good defensive stance, and it was only by incredible luck and effort that she managed to deflect all four thrusts. Admittedly, they were all coming in from the same angle. Apparently no one had taught them about group tactics. That should have been to her advantage, but Amelia quickly lost ground, facing an onslaught of brute force and awkwardness.

She remembered…

_"Every time I see Ross crush a bonewalker with one swing, I remember all my technique training with Seth and cringe," said Franz._

_"What do you mean?" Amelia had asked._

_"Well, I don't like to generalise, but… there seems to be this thing in deep combat where men forget all about tactics and just focus on hitting things as hard as possible. Obviously not Artur, it doesn't work with magic, but Ross, my brother Forde, Cormag… I'm pretty sure I've even seen Ephraim do it."_

_"And Tana doesn't?"_

_"She puts force into her strikes, yes, but look at that precision."_

_The hellbone had made a popping sound as Tana's lance cut through its iron-hard spine and shoved upward. The creature's skull sailed past them and into the river, where it turned to dust. "Tana makes up for not being the size of her Pegasus by paying attention to where she aims. Marisa, too. And they're both terrifying if you interrupt them in the middle of a melee."_

_Amelia had pointed to the creature emerging from the forest across the river. "Looks like an Arch Mogall is trying to take the princess by surprise."_

_Franz had wheeled his horse around. "Oh, we'll see about that. After you."_

…And stopped remembering just in time to see Narshen's lance coming down on her like a seven-foot truncheon. Amelia raised her own lance in time, but the force of the blow still knocked her back, and she landed on the riverbank. Well, at least the ground was soft – ouch – and rocky.

"Want to give up?" Narshen offered, smirking insufferably.

"…Sergeant?" Amelia called again. Narshen rolled his eyes.

"Yes, recruit?" Faval was leaning against a birch, watching her with an expression that said _I see you, now what are you going to do wrong?_

She climbed to her feet, brushed away some of the wet sand, and gave her lance a twirl. "Request permission to hit like a girl."

The sergeant grinned. "Permission granted."

If her opponent had been paying attention to her instead of the sergeant, he would have seen the first hit coming. The next two convinced him that he should back away, and soon Amelia was facing a wall of four slightly confused trainees. "What do you think you're doing? There's only one way this can end."

"I know. But, like the sergeant said, force sizes aren't fair-minded," said Amelia. "I've got you outnumbered one to four. You deal with it." She lunged.


	3. If Looks Could Severely Inconvenience

**Symmetry**

**Chapter Three: If Looks Could Severely Inconvenience**

Franz levered the lock off the stable stores with a steel lance, feeling ridiculous as he used a weapon to get at weaponry, but Franz greatly preferred swords and the lance looked about as sturdy as an origami shield already. From inside he picked out what he wanted, used the steel lance to brace the castle door shut, and set about trying to motivate Forde's horse. Over the years, his steed had developed the same laid-back attitude as its rider, but none of the other adult ones would trust Franz, and he needed a strong one. "Come on… come _on_… ergh – how does Forde _ever_ get you to charge an enemy?"

In protest of being asked to do work, Forde's horse neighed and clapped its hooves on the stone. In protest of Franz's easy journey through the castle to the stables, the universe placed a squad of enemy soldiers in the corridor outside.

"Hear that?" one of them asked.

"Just some horse getting weird," another said dismissively.

"Don't be an idiot, Renais horses are the best in Magvel. Fetch a great price on any market. …We should definitely check it out."

"'Cause there might be someone in there?"

"…Yeah. Sure."

By now Franz had managed to get the saddle and gear onto Forde's horse, and was halfway mounted when the first blow made his steel-lance-barricade vibrate like a guitar string. He abruptly changed tactics, and although the horse wasn't very co-operative, the invaders clearly had no idea who they were dealing with. Another two impacts almost played a chord on the ancient, eroded metal. A third snapped it, between the shaft and point, and two men burst into the room. Franz's incredible powers of observation quickly slotted them into the Not Citizens of Renais category, which meant they were both due a good bash.

"Told you it was just a horse," said the second, slightly less criminally-minded mercenary.

"Even better," said the first, who was helmeted. "Let's get it outside and in with ours, so we can get the gear and stuff off later, once we've got the castle." They approached the horse cautiously, and Franz slipped out from behind the door.

"…Are you sure that's all right with–"

"Hey, we got hired to help those guys get in here for some other big prize – the sort you'd be lucky if you could spell. They won't care about who gets a few big steeds."

"That's the plan," Franz agreed, neatly snatching the mercenary's helmet off before he clocked them both on the back of the head with the pommel of his sword. It would have been faster to kill them, but then the memory would have grated on him all day, and rope was plentiful in the stables anyway. He left them bound and gagged in the vacated stall, and rode out into the morning.

Everything still seemed quiet from outside the castle. The flags drifted morosely in the vague breeze, but all else was quiet stillness. This was apparently the quietest siege in history, and Franz wondered just what the invaders were up to. 'Some big prize', the merc had said.

At the south wall, things were a bit louder; soldiers clustered around the main gate, which had been opened without damage. How had anyone managed that? It would take an inside agent, someone who looked friendly to Renais but secretly worked for their anonymous foe. Franz grinned at the irony as he donned the unconscious merc's full helm – it covered his face, and was painted with the group's insignia on both sides. Add to that his generic steely armor, and he looked like any other young mercenary.

They only had a few cavaliers riding with them, but those were obviously on patrol, which gave Franz an opening he desperately needed. Aside from a long detour through the winding forest, there was no way to ride southeast without being spotted. He formulated the skeleton of a plan and set out, not daring to waste any time until the royalty and Seth were safe. Predictably, one of the invaders called out to him as he charged, somewhat awkwardly, past the gate.

"I _said_, get over here!" the archer repeated. Franz pulled up on the reins and pulled vaguely in the archer's direction, as if he didn't know who had spoken. "Where do you think you're going?"

"Hrmfrrflmf," Franz garbled, as if he couldn't speak inside the helmet. He also made a point of staring several feet to the left of the one shouting at him.

"Oh, bloody hell. Gone and got your head stuck in the wrong size helm?" Franz nodded and tapped his gauntlet against the metal a few times. It rang in his ear like earmuffs made from gongs. "By divinity, I don't know what kind of mess I'm commanding. All right. Get over that way – I said _that_ way – and Brinks'll get you out of there, maybe even with yours ears still attached." Franz nodded again and started toward the southeast. "No, I said _that_ way! That's the wrong – oh, hells, we're better off without him." Franz urged his brother's horse into a gallop.

* * *

"Does it still hurt?" asked Sergeant Faval, prodding.

"_Ouch_! Yes!" Amelia snapped, pulling her foot away from him.

"Probably a sprain, maybe a little break," the sergeant decided, straightening up. "Full marks on beating the starch out of your opponents, recruit, but if you're going to stalk away triumphantly, try to take a route that's not a bog."

"I said she was useless."

"Narsh, if she's so useless, stand up."

"I _told_ you, my legs are numb!"

Amelia smiled and replayed the memory of knocking Narshen off-balance and smacking the pressure points under his knees with the heel of her lance. He had crumpled like a house of cards under a wyvern. The other three had been subdued in a variety of similar ways, usually not causing anything like permanent damage but very efficiently removing their will to fight. A fifth recruit had rushed her from behind, close to the end of the match, but he was breathing much better now. Amelia hadn't intended her second backwards jab to swing up like that, so she hadn't put her full strength into it.

"How in blazes did she do all that?" one of them demanded, as though Faval had somehow rigged a different Amelia in place of the real one.

"Recruit, are you addressing a superior officer?" Faval asked.

"…Yeah…"

"Then do it properly!"

He asked again, this time expanding greatly on the cursing, but ended it with "…sergeant?"

"I was expecting you lot to pay attention to your surroundings. You've only been winning against her because I've been giving you advantages as you had not earned, based on the assumption that you would have a clue what to do with them, i.e. learn a _tactic_ or two from someone who knows more about battle than the rest of you put together!" Faval nearly smiled, although it was the sort of expression that would unnerve an elderbael. "Never let it be said that I am a man who cannot take a lemon from life and turn it into an acidic area support weapon! Therefore I considered it _advisable_ to let you see what happens when Recruit Amelia is allowed to fight on her own terms, e.g. you lot get your rears handed to you on a military-regulation-sized platter!"

Even Amelia joined in the gawking. It lasted quite a while.

"…You've been doing this on purpose!" she repeated. "Uh… on purpose, sergeant?"

"In a manner of speaking," Faval agreed.

"What manner is that, sarge?"

"The 'too bloody right I have' manner, recruit. And you haven't been complaining about it, which shows fortitude, but you'd better practice storming away victoriously a few more times or you'll break something."

"Like my nose," Narshen grumbled, although it was just a bruise.

"That which does not kill you should at least hurt enough for you to know better next time!" the sergeant declared. "Everyone on your feet! Recruit Narshen, I hope you make friends quickly, 'cause you're going to need them to carry you! Recruit Amelia, you will notice at this time that your lance, helpful pole that it is, can also function as a handy crutch until such time as you need to ventilate a hostile force! I know I gave you all an order because I saw the trees bend, so _move_! We are on the march!"

* * *

Whoever these enemy soldiers were, they knew how to be efficient. As Seth and Eirika made their way through the corridors of Castle Renais, they found that the weapons had been removed from every storage place, including the ornamental suits of armor. It didn't matter quite as much as it might have, as they also only ever heard the distant echoes of the intruders. Obviously this was meant to be a _subtle_ conquest-and-attempted-regicide.

Eirika was trying not to think like that, but she couldn't imagine why else anyone would want to take over Castle Renais right now. The treasuries had been depleted significantly by the restoration effort, and the more conventional treasures – the great ceiling mural of the battle against the Demon King, or the hidden chamber of the Sacred Twins – were essentially impossible to remove. The only reason to bother invading would be to kill Ephraim, and probably Eirika, too.

Seth couldn't _help_ thinking like that. He was well aware that this danger was probably a match for the Grado invasion force that had killed King Fado, and the royal twins were now his responsibility. Well, if it came to a life-or-death situation, at least his confusion over Eirika would become moot. Knights tend to make better dead heroes than nobles.

Somewhere in the castle, Eirika decided, she would find a weapon. Something sturdy that she could use well, like a rapier, or a table. Something good in mahogany, maybe. Once she had armed herself, she would find Ephraim and Tana, and then she would kill absolutely anyone within forty miles who had considered harming a citizen of Renais. It was a good plan, and too straightforward to have major strategic flaws. She always had been the better strategist, she thought with a hint of pride.

"We're getting close," Seth murmured.

"To the royal chambers? Seth, I've lived here longer than you've known what a horse is."

"My apologies. Of course."

It was also rather disturbing that Seth was so… edgy. Eirika wasn't used to edginess in the Silver Knight, heroic general of Renais. Never before had he ridden into battle with less than perfect certainty that he was doing the best that he possibly could. Now he seemed to be constantly afraid, not that he was doing less than he was able, but that he couldn't do what would be required of him to save her.

And, Eirika knew, it _was_ her that Seth was intent on protecting. Well, she supposed, that was reasonable, since they didn't know what situation Ephraim was in… but that was duty. Seth would kill or die for Ephraim, because it was his duty. Protecting her was something else that duty had no part of. He approached it with the determination and fire of a Chosen One working to fulfill their mystical destiny. Or even Destiny.

Did he believe so strongly in the way she was helping to lead the kingdom? Was it loyalty to her father, and his last command to protect her from harm?

He certainly didn't love her, or he would have shown it by now.

Eirika wasn't certain what that meant for her own feelings. She still hadn't _quite_ worked out what love was, or was supposed to be, but she expected it was foolish to be devoted to someone who cared for her only through personal directive. It wasn't easy – Seth was brave, compassionate, and as stable as a battalion of magnetized knights – but there was no chance that the Princess of Renais was going to trip over herself trying to _court_ the commander of her military.

Seth motioned for her to stop when they reached the next intersection, and leaned carefully around the corner. Things didn't look good from there; three mercenaries were standing guard outside Ephraim's door. 'Standing guard' was a laughably formal way of putting it, but they _were_ standing there, or at least nearby, and – this was the sort of detail that a veteran warrior noticed quickly – all holding swords as tall as some recruits he had trained.

"That looks like they've already gotten inside," Eirika hissed.

"Indeed," the paladin agreed. He nodded down the hall on the other side of the juncture. "Run, princess."

"I am not fleeing, armed or not!" she protested.

"I didn't intend that you should," Seth replied. A smile tugged at one side of his face, giving him an expression that she knew had caused more than one Frelian Pegasus knight to consider moving to Renais.

Borse had been wondering for more than an hour how long they'd have to stand guard here, and was starting to think no one was ever coming out of this room. In that case, it would be safe to relax a bit, maybe bring out a pack of cards, and add a little bonus to this week's pay –

"What was that?" Teak snapped, staring down the hall.

"I saw it too," Flynn agreed. "A cape, long blue hair–"

"Princess Eirika!" Borse demanded. "Get her; there's a bounty!" All three of them charged down the hall, Borse lagging under the weight of his heavier armor. This put him at the back of the group, so that when they turned the corner – and yes, that was Princess Eirika they were chasing – he was the one Seth tackled from behind and bore down onto the stone floor.

Teak was gratified to see that the princess was unarmed, but this wasn't quite the gift he expected it to be. "If _you_" – her first high kick connected with a sound like someone beating a steak with an oar – "did _anything_" – the second one stunned him into dropping his sword – "to _my_ brother" – the third dropped him like a one-legged tripod – "then I'll be back for _more_," she informed him.

Flynn rushed Seth, who was too busy to be subtle and so brought his sword up in a wide slash across the man's torso. That was him down, but Borse shoved upwards and threw the paladin off, rising to his feet to face Eirika. She had taken up Teak's unwieldy blade, but it couldn't be used well enough in the enclosed space to do anything more than score the mercenary's armor. He laughed at Eirika's attempts until she made the obvious conclusion, and swung at his head. Borse ducked and would have counterthrust viciously, except that his bent posture opened a gap between two back plates, and Seth was much faster than he.

"Thanks," said Eirika, glad that there was no carpet underfoot to be stained. "What about the third?"

"It looks like he'll be down for some hours – let us find the king," said Seth, barely finishing his sentence before the princess was away down the hall. She had dropped the giant sword, but sheer cold fury at anyone hostile to her brother made Eirika terrifying enough on her own. She threw open the door, fairly certain that, whatever was happening in the royal chambers, it wasn't private.

She froze for a moment, as shock and fears she hadn't let herself imagine collided at the point marked 'transcendent vengeance'. If she hadn't heard Franz's description, she would have thought Ephraim had requisitioned a marvellously crafted statue of a sleeping Tana. She lay on the floor, apparently knocked off her feet by some assault, and her eyes were wide with surprise.

"Tana…"

"The king," said Seth, arriving behind her. He darted across the room, looked in one door, slammed it shut –carefully– and ran to the next, where he gasped. Eirika didn't think Seth had ever gasped before in his entire life, but he had the lungs for it. She leaned past him to see Ephraim, crumpled and leaning against the side of the bed. Petrified.

And sitting in an ornate chair against the wall, Rennac looked up from sharpening his daggers. "At last, you're here!" he said, sounding relieved. "There isn't much time, and it's quite complicated, so listen – you have to get Sieglinde, quickly – there's a summoner in the castle, a powerful one, he's created some kind of artefact – he's looking for the Sacred Stone – I've managed to lure him here, but undoing all this is going to be difficult, he's got help."

"Rennac, what are you talking about?" Eirika interjected. "Who has been turning everyone to stone? And how did they get all those soldiers inside the castle?"

"I can only answer so many questions at a time, princess," said Rennac. "But you can start by turning around."

They did turn, in time to see the dark power welling up behind them. Seth and Eirika attempted to leap away, but the blast of Flux still sent them sprawling across the room.

"He was talking about me," said the summoner. "A good story, Rennac."

"Inventing things on the spot _is_ a specialty of mine," the rogue agreed as the fallen warriors groaned. "Does it pay extra?"

* * *

Franz charged at maximum speed through the forest, not having to urge Forde's horse at all. He was more concerned with directing the steed's breakneck gallop along a safe path, because the Gwyllgi fifty feet behind them didn't seem to be tiring in the slightest, and all three of its heads looked hungry. Franz had been able to deal with the pair of mauthe doogs when he stumbled across them exiting their bramble-thicket den, but their stronger form was out of the question for a lone cavalier.

_Plans, plans, you came up with a good one for tricking those mercenaries a few hours ago, now just think of one that can stop a ravenous conglomeration of pure evil._ He had already tried throwing his stolen heavy helmet at his pursuer. The Gwyllgi had eaten it.

He tried to remember what Lute had said about monster hunting habits. It had been interspersed with commentary on how brilliant she was, so Franz had to filter through quite a lot of memory to find anything important. _"…Created unnaturally, and so don't behave like ordinary predators… only attack animals when humans aren't available… of course, since I'm exceptionally talented and can read over forty dead languages… they're very stubborn about catching prey after seeing it… so snuggly; I really should bring my genius to bear on domesticating them…"_

At the next sturdy low branch the horse sped underneath, Franz reached up and caught it, letting his forward momentum help him clamber up on top. The horse kept running, not aware that the Gwyllgi was a committed example of what someone who had spent too much time around Lute might call a 'humanitarian' (in the same sense that Queen Tana had declared herself a vegetarian). The Gwyllgi arrived seconds later, leaping high enough to scratch at the branch, but its wolfish shape was not suited to clambering, and Franz was able to kick it away easily.

He was, in a way, now in a much safer position, but it was a bit of a stalemate as far as being rent limb from limb was concerned. He considered hacking off a smaller branch and seeing if the old 'Fetch!' trick would work, but Franz guessed that, at best, only one of the three heads might be distracted. Surely there had to be some way of turning those multiple heads to a disadvantage… but monsters didn't argue, so there was no chance of stirring up a disagreement between them, was there?

Oh. Of course there was.

The Gwyllgi stood underneath the branch, staring up at Franz, who was crouched at the thickest point, where it met with the tree. An entire chorus of simmering growls was rising up to him in a perfect harmony of terror, but knights tend to become knights because they have an odd response to terror – metaphorically, a tendency to run up to it and kick it in the shins.

Franz leapt, grabbing the end of the branch as it passed more-or-less underneath him, and swung down in a slow arc as the wood creaked and bent. The monster wolf seemed paralysed as its left and right heads appeared to strain to split off. Both desperately wanted to bite, but more importantly, both desperately wanted to bite _first_, and disagreed on which way to turn. Franz turned his fall into an awkward sort of drop-kick that knocked the central head into the tree-trunk, and started swinging as soon as he had regained his footing.

It went well until he stabbed through the left head's neck, killing that part of the monster. With only two remaining, the Gwyllgi was able to resolve its differences easily, and immediately spun to slash at him with fangs and cruel claws. Franz staggered back, clutching at the gashes on his sword arm. He had healing salves in the packs on the horse, but there was no chance of finding Forde's steed with this single-minded beast after him…

Over the thunderous rumble of the monster's stereo growling, Franz heard a much sharper, staccato rhythm grow louder. The downside of being single-minded, of course, was that the Gwyllgi wasn't paying any attention to creatures other than Franz, right up until Forde's horse concussed it with trampling hooves. When his equine assistant had passed, the cavalier lunged in with a killing strike. The creature hissed, turned to ash, and crumbled.

Franz had barely had a chance to breathe when he heard more feet pounding the ground. "Who's there? Come on, I heard the scuffle, so you might as well show your… oh. …Sir Franz, isn't it?"

"Sergeant Faval!" Franz acknowledged. He looked between the instructor and Forde's horse, which was cropping a wild tuft of grass and looking as smug as horses are capable of looking. "…Did the horse lead you here?"

"Something like that, yeah. Found us just over that hill there. Just a moment," said the sergeant, half-twisting to look back the way he came. "My _grandmother_ could march faster than you lot! Pick up the pace, recruits!" Faval turned back to Franz. "News from Renais, is there?"

"Lots," said Franz sighing, "and not nearly enough. Let me explain."

* * *

Eirika rose to something like a sitting position, rubbing her head where it had hit a writing desk. Rennac was reclining lazily in his chair, while the strange summoner had assumed an imperious position, with his robes folded into his crossed arms. "It's far too late to resist, princess. That was always the brilliance of my plan – you were guaranteed never to know anything until it was far too late. Now, are you ready to surrender? I believe it's the tradition for the victor to be irritatingly condescending in his implausible generosity."

"I expect I have a great deal more experience in that than you do," said Eirika, reaching under Ephraim's bed. Seth, it appeared, was pretending to be less conscious than he was – at least, she hoped he was acting. Either way, Eirika had just laid her hand on an emergency rapier, and lunged at the summoner. He didn't flinch, and Eirika wondered why, until Rennac struck with mongoose speed and deflected the thrust with a pair of curved daggers. Baffled by the idea of fighting a former ally, Eirika wasn't sure what to do with him – somehow killing, even if she could manage it, would be unsatisfying.

She settled for disarming the rogue, but that was exactly what Rennac obviously intended to avoid, and with his blades constantly whirling in blurred tandem, it was impossible to pick a target that would still be there when she struck. The princess pushed the offensive, backing him up against the wall, and it was going well until another spell of Flux burst from the floor beneath her. Eirika collapsed with a shout, and every muscle seemed to catch fire as she tried to use it.

"This _is_ too late," said the summoner, striding across the room to look down on her. "Tell me where the secret chamber is; I demand it! Carcino _will_ have the last Sacred Stone!"

Seth chose that moment to deliver a hook punch to the back of the summoner's head, causing him to sprawl forward into Rennac – hopefully getting stabbed in the process. Still shaking the dark aftereffects out of his head, Seth lifted Eirika to her feet and nearly dragged her out of the room. Dark magic was, sometimes literally, hell to fight, especially in close quarters with a rogue for a bodyguard. He didn't like leaving King Ephraim behind, but Eirika was clearly in greater danger, and they had an opening to escape…

At least, it appeared to be clear until they reached the central royal chamber, where something was lurking near Tana. No, lurking wasn't the right word. No half-snake demon the size of a young dragon could lurk well in a room where its slithering 'hair' touched the ceiling. It was a Gorgon, and it was _huge_. The creature's pincer hands clicked irritably as Seth skidded to a halt. It wasn't _quite_ between them and the door, but they would have to pass through what might be called _merciless-savaging-range_ to get out.

"Ah, you've met my loyal pet," said the summoner, idly pulling one of Rennac's daggers out of his chest and casting it aside. There was no wound left behind that Seth could see. "I would advise you not to annoy her, but… well, so few things _don't_ annoy Gorgons, and she has a particular grudge against everyone in the world but me."

_Hsshhhh…_ The Gorgon seemed almost confused by Seth's lack of motion; perhaps she wondered why he wasn't running, considering that he hadn't felt the power of Stone yet. He pulled Eirika closer.

"Princess. You must escape and lead the knights to victory," he whispered to her.

"I won't leave you here," Eirika snapped back, sounding affronted by the suggestion.

Seth pulled again, nearly forcing her to face him. "I cannot let myself fail you… my lady." He stared into her eyes until his entire world was as black as night, limned with oceanic blue.

She saw it, and nearly gasped.

"Seth–"

"Go!" he shouted, pushing her toward the door and drawing his sword against the Gorgon. Starting simply, Seth swung his blade around in a high, meteoric slash. Eirika stumbled as her wish to stay and fight collided with the knowledge that Seth was right, and she darted out before the next blast of Flux could catch her in the doorway. Knowing that she was safe, a weight rose from Seth's mind, and he sank into the battle for the sake of the battle. He could handle a single monster, despite its unusual power…

His powerful blows knocked the creature's guarding arms to either side, leaving one of its hearts open to a good piercing. Uncooperatively, the blade's edge clattered ineffectively across the Gorgon's dark scales. And neither the summoner nor Rennac were making any move against him. Well, his main objective had been completed, and life was getting too complicated anyway…

The Gorgon's eyes flared with blackness.

_Crrrack!_

* * *

"The next group east of here in under Sergeant Dominick," said Faval, looking at the sun to determine just which direction east was in the hilly forest. "We'll find him tonight, and we'll both go looking for the next ones… all the knights should be gathering near Castle Renais by nightfall tomorrow – morning at the latest."

"I'll ride the other way, but… more than a day before we're ready to take back the castle?" Franz asked, looking pained.

"Nothing to be done for it," said Faval. "I've got faith that the Princess and the King can hold their own for that long." It hadn't occurred to him, or Franz, that traitorous rogues could be involved.

"…Right. Well, if you can spare anyone, I wouldn't mind backup," said Franz, frowning.

"Amelia!" Faval shouted, turning to find that she was already standing just behind him. "Ah. You're the biggest punch in the smallest packaging; you're assigned to Sir Franz. Oh, she's got a leg injury."

"Doesn't matter on horseback anyway," Franz insisted, waving the concern away. "…Hi, Amelia."

"_Sir_ Franz," she said, grinning.

Sergeant Faval got the impression that he had just done something he wouldn't have approved of, if only he had any idea _what_ he was doing. Still, he formed up the rest of the group and started them on a fast march to the east, leaving the cavalier and recruit to pick their own direction.

"There wasn't anyone else badly injured, was there?" asked Franz, digging through his saddlebags.

Narshen and company flashed through her mind. "Not badly, no," she decided. "Certainly nothing debilitating except to really stupid egotism."

"…Sounds like you've been having fun," said Franz, producing an Elixir. "I just wouldn't want to have kept this a secret if anyone else needed it. Hold still." He soaked a bandage with a dose of the potion, and started tying it around her ankle.

"What's your plan?" asked Amelia. "Are we taking the groups in the west?"

"There aren't many knights out there," said Franz. "Anyway, I thought we could just speed things up a bit, since I doubt even the Demon King could stop Sergeant Faval from gathering the army now that he knows what's at stake."

"Speed things up?"

"Yeah."

"As in…"

"I thought we'd head back to Castle Renais and retake it ourselves."

Amelia contemplated this for a moment. "Sounds good. This bandage should soak in and fix everything up by the time we get there?"

"That's the plan," Franz agreed, helping Amelia to her feet. "Want some help onto the horse?"

"Um… yeah. …Franz?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you think either of us is going to die before this battle's over?

The cavalier recoiled in shock, which then faltered and faded into an uncertain concern. "Uh… well, no. Of course not."

Amelia sighed. "Then I don't really have an excuse for this."

She kissed him.

For several moments afterwards, Franz stared blankly ahead, looking like a man witness to miracles. Eventually he managed to focus on Amelia again. She was smiling at him in a way he had become familiar with on their original quest: it meant he had just done something that, for reasons he couldn't comprehend, counted as cute in her judgment. "…I think that doesn't require an excuse. Um… _ever_."

"Shall we ride?"

The next coherent thought Franz had didn't arrive until he was already riding north again, Amelia sitting in front of him with her lance in hand, ready to obliterate any monsters that came their way. It was, somewhat shockingly, not about her, but Castle Renais and the enemy waiting for them. _They are so going to _lose.


	4. Sword and Shield

**Symmetry**

**Chapter Four: Sword and Shield**

When Castle Renais appeared in the distance, Franz had almost been rocked into a doze by the horse's speedy saunter. Fortunately, Forde's horse had already proven its intelligence, and did so again by stopping when it reached the edge of the forest, out of sight of even the sharpest-eyed sentries. The cavalier and passenger soldier shook awake and alert, disturbed by the sudden stillness. Ahead of them, the field stretched almost flat from the edge of the trees to the castle's land.

"Are those soldiers on the gate?" asked Amelia, squinting.

"Mm-hmm," Franz confirmed. "I already had to sneak past them once. I don't think they're going to shrug off a random charge for the second time."

"I could take you prisoner," Amelia offered. Franz raised an eyebrow. "You're not that much taller than me." They both looked at the anonymous armor he was wearing, and the Renais crest on her collar-plate. She frowned. "_You_ could take _me_ prisoner," she relented.

"No, they'd probably recognised me and Forde's horse anyway. Plus we don't know what they do with prisoners." He stared across the wide field, not over it, but at the tall grass waving gently in the breeze, rippling like green water. Many improvements had been made to Castle Renais when it was rebuilt, and while Ephraim didn't like secret exits, Eirika had plenty of influence in the planning stage, and they did need somewhere to store all those artefacts…

"You're not worried that we're horribly outnumbered? And don't try to twist it around into some kind of joke; I already did that and I ended up breaking something," Amelia warned him. On that thought, she reached down to untie the bandage, and found that her ankle was in perfect condition again.

"Well, I didn't have a frontal assault in mind, but I _was_ planning for us to be very well-armed. Think you can carry everything you want to bring in?" Franz asked, sliding out of the saddle with some difficulty. He started rummaging through the saddlebags, picking out elixirs and the like. "We won't need weapons."

"You must have very convincing philosophical arguments," said Amelia, hopping down more gracefully. "I can't see the guards too clearly, but I can definitely see their weapons. I've had smaller _pets_."

Franz looked up, deciding that there wasn't much that they wouldn't be able to get soon anyway. "I thought you liked birds."

"The size of the pets is not the point," Amelia pressed on as he tied the reins to a low branch. "Franz… I can trust you and still be scared."

He nodded as he took her hand. "Me too. Let's go," he said, and pulled.

"_Oof!_"

"Sorry, should have warned you," Franz said quickly, as they landed side by side on the ground. "We can get closer through the grass – you know how to do the soldier crawl?"

"Shoulders and elbows, yeah," Amelia said. "And this time it's not even through a swamp."

"There are swamps near here?" he asked as they started into the grass.

"Gerik once told me 'The peaks of Caer Pelyn would flood if a mercenary band set up camp there'."

"Words to live by."

"What about 'you must be the change you want to see in the world'?"

"I'm trying, I'm trying."

It was slow going across the field, even when the gently rolling terrain was in their favour; neither of them dared do anything that might create an odd ripple in the grass and warn the enemy sentries. The grass protected them from sight on all sides, but it also kept the wind away from them, while the sun had returned with renewed vigour to try to melt the paint off Amelia's armor. And for a field that looked so soft from above, there were a surprising number of sharp rocks just sticking out of the earth. Franz was certain that, by sheer bad luck, he had managed to take the route that passed over all of them.

They made implacable progress anyway, giving the castle a wide berth until they reached the eastern side, gratefully rising off bruised joints. "So now we're much closer and still stuck outside," Amelia observed.

"You're kinda quick to criticise, aren't you?" asked Franz.

"It's probably pent up," she decided. "Give me one of these soldiers and I'll gripe him into submission. …The next part of the plan isn't to climb the wall, is it?"

"Ergh, no," he assured her. Slightly further along, the mortared stone angled out and back in again, looking a bit like a very blocky bulge in the wall. A sturdy steel plate was set into it, smooth and featureless. Franz felt around the stones for a while, apparently found one to his liking, and thumped it with his fist. "_Agh_," Franz moaned, recoiling. "Oh, ouch… wrong side. Get the other one, will you?"

Amelia blinked. "What?"

"Symmetrically opposite – same place relative to the door, but on your side," he explained.

Dubiously, she did so, and found that this one sunk into the wall a bit, absorbing the impact. The steel plate fell open, revealing only darkness within. Amelia followed the wall-bulge to the top. "Franz, this is a chimney. They go _down_. Into lots of fire."

"Looks like it, doesn't it?" he agreed. "I didn't want to say anything, in case we were being watched. This is the, ah… _elite_ armory." The part about not needing weapons was suddenly much clearer. Amelia clambered inside, found that there were rungs set into the wall, and started down, with Franz following and pulling the door shut behind them. It should have left them in total darkness, but there was still a faint glow coming from below.

Only twenty feet below ground, they came into a low-ceilinged room with equipment racks covering the walls. Castle Renais didn't really have a treasury any more, having spent a huge amount on restoration efforts across Magvel, but they did have the elite armory. Illumination was provided by light brands, and their glow glinted off an array of masterful weaponry. Amelia wondered if she would be able to carry all that she wanted – there was an entire actual _rack_ of brave lances.

"This is getting better," she agreed fervently. "I mean, I'm still not–"

"Seth said that I've been ready for this for a while," said Franz, distantly. "He wanted – _wants_ – to make sure I'm ready for the responsibility it brings, but right now I think he'll admit that the power has its uses, too." The cavalier reached into a sturdy chest, straightened into a perfectly disciplined knight pose, and held the Knight Crest over his heart.

The lights were quite dramatic.

When she had recovered from most of the phantasmagorical afterimages, Amelia saw that Franz was back in his preferred armor, green as new spring growth, and now with a white shield slung on his back. It was hard to tell precisely what else was different about him; it was more the feeling that if a Tarvos tackled him it would bounce off with a concussion. It wasn't that he couldn't die. Just that today wasn't the day, and tomorrow didn't look good either.

"Not that that isn't… uh… attractive, in a plated-with-steel way, but aren't I just even deadweightier now, in comparison?" Amelia asked.

"Never," said Franz, holding up a hand and studying it. "…Do I look palatial?"

"I'm pretty sure that means 'like a palace', not 'like a paladin'. Anyway, if these work on knights and cavaliers, I don't see why recruits should get left out," she said.

"Because recruits always choose whether they want to be knights or cavaliers first," said Franz, who would have been more sympathetic if an entrancingly inscribed silver blade hadn't just caught his eye.

"Well _I_ haven't!" she growled at the remaining crests. "I've been a recruit for ages. Sometimes it feels like I'm going to be a recruit my whole life." She snatched up one of the red-and-bronze shields, as everyone knew she would.

Franz spun a complete circle, searching for the source of the sudden echoing voice, before he noticed the crest shining in Amelia's fist. Words filled the armory like a battalion speaking in chorus, but he couldn't understand any of it.

"_This one is unique_," Amelia whispered as she stared unblinkingly ahead. Something about her words sounded like a recitation, and Franz wondered if she was translating the echoing voices "_Talent, skill, experience, yes, but openness as well, and determination to make that openness into a great strength. Even when she believes she has no hope, she will not bend. And she is always learning… Let it be that she will never break._"

Altogether, the lights were even better this time.

* * *

The startled axefighter toppled and Eirika sheathed her rapier. He was the last one, although it was beyond her imagining why that summoner would send fighters to the castle library of all places. Hardly mattered now. She needed to find Lute's monster books, and very quickly. If the young sage had seen fit not to fill them with notes on her own brilliance or Artur's curious traits, that would be even better.

And, considering that there were five dead intruders scattered about the castle library's aisles, it would be very good if the book she needed had an eye-catching cover and was lying alone on an end table with a bookmark in the chapter on the weaknesses of monsters given hyperpowers by ancient dark magic. At least, it was very likely to be ancient. For some reason it seemed that all the worst evils were old, possibly because they had so much practice at it.

Halfway up a wheeled ladder, Eirika kicked at the inside face of the shelves and rolled toward the other end, catching book titles as they passed. At least, most of the titles. _Magnolias in Alchemical … Manifesting Anima … Matriarchies of the … Mediating Arts … Microscopy … Mimes … Mon– _yes! –_uments of the Sixth CenturyRausten Cathedrals._ …What happened to 'Monsters'! The ladder collided with the far end of the shelves, jolting Eirika out of her indignation. She dropped to the floor, wondering what sort of world let this happen, and a glint of gold caught her eye. Against the wall, a single shining tome lay on a small table, with a feathered bookmark sticking out the top.

Ah.

She pounced on the book and opened it to the bookmark, searching the page immediately. _Upon the mastery of inscribing within the gothic font described in chapter six, a novice may wish to develop a personal touch, such as a particular type of fruits or mythical beings–_ Eirika slammed it shut. The glittering cover declared itself to be _Perfecting the Art of Text Illumination_. The capital letters were huge, fancy, lined with gold ink, and held an entire salad's worth of fruit. She dropped it like a flaming snake.

All right, where in _blazes_ was the… Eirika paused. In that last battle with an axefighter, a few books had been dislodged from the shelves. One particularly large one lay face up in the middle of the aisle, where a revenant glared up hungrily from its cover. Carefully, realising that she didn't want to attract attention from outside the library, the princess knelt by the giant tome and began the search again.

* * *

Amelia groaned, shook her head to clear it, and silently demanded to know why magical artefacts of enhancement always seemed to insist on making the user feel like they had been put through an automatic laundering device. She recalled being issued with speedwings by one of the better Grado captains. For hours after using them, the world had been blurred, possibly because her eyes kept trembling in her head. On the plus side, Franz was now looking at her with concern, which was one of his cuter expressions.

"Nngh?" she asked, straightening from where she had fallen over the hauberk shelves.

"Um," he answered, equally coherent.

"Hey. What am I?" Amelia asked, remembering most of what had happened. She raised a hand. It looked the same. So did the rest of her armor. And, distantly disappointing, Franz was still taller than her. "I look exactly the same!" A thought struck her, and she accidentally spun a complete circle before remembering that she had to turn her neck to look behind. "What? I don't even have wings!"

"If I ask you what those voices were… you'd have no idea what I was talking about, right?" asked Franz, slowly.

"What?"

"Right. Just checking. Um… I thought you looked good to start with, if it means anything," he volunteered.

"Everything and nothing," Amelia replied, looking like she was about to vent steam. "This is _not_ fair. I just want to _help_ – wha… agh!" With the word 'help', she had irritably kicked a discarded helmet, but it hadn't hurt her foot. What it _had_ done was rocket across the room, ricochet off a beam, clip the ceiling, and come careening back at them at head height. Both ducked to let it pass. Hostile projectiles always have the right of way.

Franz followed the trajectory again with his eyes, did some quick mental calculations, and took a swing at her. Amelia caught his fist instantly, without seeming to put much effort into stopping its momentum. In fact, it took her a moment to register what had happened.

"You tried to hit me!" Amelia protested.

"I would have stopped in time, I was just testing!" he insisted.

"Heroes, recruits, insane sergeants… males of all ages are bizarre," she muttered, letting him go. Franz deftly intertwined their fingers before she pulled away, refusing to lose contact with her. Amelia picked up the lances she had chosen, slipping one into the holding straps on her back. Neither felt as heavy as before, either.

"What's next?" Amelia asked.

"My plan didn't really get any further than this," Franz admitted. "But I think cutting off their reinforcements would be a start."

She squeezed his hand. "Better than a walk in the park," said the recruit. She had always liked this armor anyway.

* * *

Eirika's focus had cut out the rest of the world; all that existed was the words on the page in front of her. If she let her world's boundaries extend up to the royal chambers and the paladin there, whose fate she didn't know, there was no chance that Rationality and Forethought were going to hold back Indiscriminate Fury from causing total havoc. If that weren't likely to doom them all, it wouldn't have sounded like a bad idea to her.

The chapters on gorgons were mostly things that she already knew – that they laid eggs only in very hot places, like the magma vents in the east, and that they could only see the parts of light on either side of human vision, the infrared and the ultraviolet. Did _anyone_ not know that they hunted with void spells and petrifaction curses?

But there was nothing about excessively large creatures with dark scales that followed anyone's orders. Lute had made notes on how suicidal it would be to attempt to tame them, and even added '…not that it would be worth the effort, hideous brutes that they are', which was quite rare for her. Lute had mixed feelings about monsters, and the mix was of the sort that changed colour and went _blorp'ck_ if you tried to stir it. Eirika was starting to think she had wasted her time when the last page grabbed her eyes and shouted _read me_.

…Considering the nature of some books on monsters, it should be made clear that was just a metaphor.

'_Legends do speak of the deeper darkness, a force that supposedly dwells within these single-form monsters, waiting to be unlocked and allowed to twist them, as terrible ferocity can shape revenants into entombed and baels into elderbaels. No known wild specimens have been encountered, but the papers of the late Mad Magus Malavol claim that he created several of them, only to see them lost when the Sacred Stones sealed away Fomortiis and eradicated the Demon King's army. Malavol was intending to create a talisman of control when an experiment backfired and reconstructed him as a reclining chair, a volume of free verse poetry, and a set of cat-themed knick-knacks._'

That was all they needed. A resurrected dark mage, or a brilliant sorcerer with a strange choice of idols; Eirika didn't really care if the summoner was Malavol or not. The Gorgon was vulnerable to the sacred power, and the Princess of Renais, with her bracelet of the moon, knew exactly where to find some in a convenient sword-shaped container.

* * *

The lieutenant didn't know why so many of his fighters were being kept in the castle courtyard, especially when it was clear that the summoner wanted to find whatever he was looking for as fast as bloody possible. He had seen – very briefly, at a distance, with a protective blindfold at the ready – the snake monster they had as their best weapon, and was leaning against one of the Renais guards who had apparently thought that being turned to stone was something that happened to _other_ people. What was there to guard against?

Rennac had been the one to advise it, explaining to the summoner that the knights out on training could return at any time, and it would be best to have the defences ready to hold them off until the Sacred Stone could be obtained. It had been a good point; the last thing they wanted was a surprise from behind, after taking the castle so neatly. Rennac was full of good advice.

It was possible that no one had told him about the secret entrance, nor the elite armory.

Franz burst out of a side passage to the castle foyer, using his few free moments –as everyone tried to determine if he was on their side or not– to hurl the locking bars into place across both doors and pointedly cleave off the handgrips with his blade. By the time the first man had thought to shout 'Get him!', Amelia had dealt that man a hammer-blow from behind, causing him to crumple almost silently. Then the entrance hall erupted into pure chaos.

The first matter was to cross the hall; both knights would have an easier time of it with an ally at their backs. Of course, there were more than a dozen rather gruff mercenaries that intended to see them not only remain separated, but be subdivided even further, and they had a number of edged implements to help them in that effort. Franz started by carving an incoming axe-head in half with a mighty swing, which made the next attackers hesitate a little more.

Amelia couldn't quite do the same, being devoted to lancewomanship, but she was able to fend foes off in clusters, and her lance darted about with the nimbleness of a silver-scaled viper. The 'super recruit' batted swords away easily, usually following each parry with a thrust that darted between armor plates with the sort of accuracy that turned up in tales of Prince Innes' archery tournaments. Axes had the weight to drive closer, so Amelia let them, dodging their awkward sweeps to lure her foes closer for a thrashing.

The mercenaries had heard many stories of the Renais army, and waded into battle with some hesitation, wondering what kind of tricks these two could perform, but as the seconds passed without either of them breathing fire or beheading four men with a single slash, they pressed harder. They were outnumbered, right? Just a couple of kids who thought they could pull off some kind of miracle and save the day. The warriors of Carcino would show them a thing or…

Then Amelia flipped her grip on her lance, planted it firmly on the floor, and vaulted over one merc to land boot-first in the face of another, and neatly covering the last of the distance between herself and Franz. It would have been nice to spare a motivational moment, but instead she turned, letting her focus narrow to just the hundred-eighty degrees in front of her. Her lance swung up, smashing into one foe's jaw, smacked away another's sword, tripped a third, punched straight through a fourth's armor, and swung back to thump the second merc senseless as he reached for his weapon.

At her back, Franz was fighting rather more frantically, as his sword didn't have a lance's reach, but he was all the faster for it. The new paladin appeared to be wielding little more than a shining blur that clashed with every opponent's weapon at once, as though he were directing and performing a discordant symphony at the same time. Few opportunities were coming up for killing blows, but some of the invaders were falling just as the injuries racked up. Still, it would be better to get moving.

Franz backed up until he collided lightly with Amelia. "Switch," he bit out, deflecting an overhead strike by sheer stubbornness. Amelia didn't bother nodding, just stepped back and pivoted at the same time as Franz, trading foes. It was a trick older than Fomortiis, and it got to be that old because people really did get into rhythms of battle, and then every surprise is a new weapon. Franz had all the room they had been giving Amelia's lance, while she was able to get past every sword-optimised guard.

One at a time, and faster as the opposition lost allies, the mercenaries fell to lance and sword, until the only sound was the heavy breathing of paladin and recruit, punctuated by the occasional groan from an unconscious enemy.

Franz looked his old rival over, then suddenly stopped as he realised she might misunderstand his intent. "Are you all right? …Sheesh, did they even touch you?"

"Yeah, side of the shin and just below the shoulder," said Amelia, as though it were normal to walk through a ridiculously uneven fray with nothing more than a couple of scratches. "…Turns out I still hate killing people."

"That's okay. You're supposed to," said Franz, looking at the battered fallen. "Although I'll probably feel less charitable when we find whoever's behind this. It's got to be a mage of some kind. Petrifying magic. Probably plotted the whole thing out."

Her eyes seemed to flare, like a fire with copper thrown in. "_Right_. Anyone who _plans_ a war I can probably impale without compunction. …Sacred Stones again?"

"It's hard to imagine why else anyone would intentionally attack Castle Renais. And one way or another, they're sure to head to the royal court eventually. Let's meet them there."

_Thunk, thunk, thunk._ Someone was knocking on the giant wooden doors. "Hey!" a muffled voice yelled. "What's the problem in there? Sounds like bloody pandemonium!"

"Nothing that concerns you," Franz growled deeply, trying not to be distracted when Amelia clapped her hands over her mouth to keep from bursting into laughter. "Get back to work unless you're volunteering for a post in a sculpture garden." He glared at Amelia, lowering his voice. "Oh, hush. I'd like to see you do better."

"Race you to the throne room," the recruit whispered, taking off to the stairs. Keeping his sword drawn, Franz followed, waiting to be ambushed at every turn. Amelia seemed to think she was invulnerable now, and after that melee she might have had a point, but Seth and Princess Eirika were still counting on them.

Halfway up the spiralling turret stairs, he nearly ran headfirst into Amelia's back, being too focused on listening for pursuit. "What's the… oh," said Franz, looking up to see the massive brigand standing in front of them. His shoulders brushed both walls; slipping past was out of the question. The brigand grinned unpleasantly.

"Which side of the castle are we on?" asked Amelia, staring straight ahead.

"Western wall," Franz replied flatly.

"I hope you… actually, no, I don't care if you can swim or not," she told the giant axeman. He glared at her, brought his weapon down in a guillotine chop, and Franz lunged ahead to deflect the attack. Amelia, unfazed, bashed one of his knees with the end of her lance, smacked the other from behind to destabilize him, and finished with a shoulder tackle to the solar plexus. The brigand staggered backwards, hit the windowsill, and tumbled out with a furious roar that ended in a massive splash.

"Ah. Moat," said Franz. "What happened to you trusting me _and_ being scared?"

"Don't worry, the first part still applies," she said lightly.

A shout echoed down the stairs: "What the hell was that? Sounds like Gunter's found someone to maim."

"I think it's possible we've lost the element of secrecy," Amelia admitted.

"But not surprise. Keep going."

They reached the third floor moments before the Carcino soldiers; Franz fended the first one off – that is, stabbed him in both legs – and then darted through before Amelia slammed the door shut and moved a handy statue against it as a barricade. In fact, on closer inspection…

"Don't I know him?" she asked.

Franz squinted at the statue's slightly obscured features. "Oh. Sorry, Geoffrey. Try to think of it as holding your ground in the name of the king."

An arrow interrupted by bouncing off the stone soldier's helmet and embedding itself in the door. The paladin and recruit leapt against opposite walls and flattened themselves out as several more shots followed from the archers at the other end of the hall. Thankfully, the support pillars provided some cover, and it hadn't occurred to their attackers to take turns firing. Instead of keeping up a steady rate, there was a moment's calm while the archers readied their bows again – a calm that Franz and Amelia immediately went about breaking with a determined charge and battle cries.

One archer _had_ thought ahead, and waited until Amelia came out of cover before loosing his shot. Even as the bowstring went _twong_ her lance was sweeping up, deflecting the shot with impossible accuracy. "Holy–" the archer began, and then the lance hit him.

Bow-users are notoriously useless in close combat, and so the fight didn't last long. Another one went out the window, landing with a satisfying splash in the moat. It was dug too deeply for him to climb out of; possibly he would find Gunter the brigand and they could chat until the Knights of Renais found them. Meanwhile, Franz and Amelia subdued – sometimes permanently – the last of the archers and ran on. They could hear boots, lots of them, and all stomping at a run.

The two wound their way to the centre of the castle, pausing at the last turn. Amelia kept rear guard while Franz peered around the corner, checking the situation outside the throne room. "Hmm…" He turned back to whisper to his companion. "The mercenaries say you stole their idea."

"What?"

"The corridor is packed with petrified guards, like those terracotta warriors that used to get buried with emperors and stuff. There's a blockade of them on both side of the door to the throne room. It's going to take some effort to get through without breaking anyone on our side."

"Any real enemies?" she asked.

"Of course. Two warriors behind the barricade. Looks like one's got a swordslayer. We'll both be at a disadvantage."

Amelia looked down, as she always did when trying to think of a plan. In this case, her eyes fell on the blue carpet they had lain down in this part of the castle; it wasn't stuck to the floor, and had bunched up where her foot had slid away from the wall. She moved it back and forth a few times, watching the fabric ripple up and flatten out again. The repetitions caught Franz's eye as well.

"What are… oh, you can't be serious," he insisted, catching on.

"Hush. I'd like to see you do better," she countered with a half-grin, echoing his remarks at the front gate.

The warriors caught sight of them as soon as they rounded the corner, but waited patiently. If the two didn't try to come through the barricade of statues, then they were someone else's problem, and if they did, then the best time to start hacking would be just before they had a chance to draw their weapons properly. Axefighters without patience don't generally live long enough to become true warriors.

Amelia's plan, of course, confounded patience and everything it stood for. Franz swung his sword in a wide, low slice just before the barrier, cutting through the carpet from one side to the other, then backed up to rejoin the recruit. They hit the stone soldiers at a run and kept shoving, quickly building up momentum. With the carpet to reduce friction, Franz and Amelia moved the entire wall, letting the fabric pile up on the other side and drastically reducing the space between the two makeshift walls until they enemy warriors were pinned between statues.

"Surrender," Franz offered.

One of the warriors brought his axe up to the neck of the first stone soldier at hand. "I'll kill him."

Franz didn't doubt that the man was serious, or that he could manage it. He thrust his blade neatly under the arm of one statue and through the warrior. "Wrong answer," he informed the survivor, who dropped his axe and bent his head. Amelia obligingly clocked him with the heavy end of her lance, and he slumped against the stone soldiers.

That left the door to the throne room clear behind them, and the scarring of dark magic across its formerly sturdy lock wasn't lost on either one. They leaned against its surface lightly, trying to hear what might be happening within – mostly silence, a faint hissing, and perhaps nothing but the blood pounding in their ears, but also possibly a deep, arcane chant.

"Right on target," said Franz.

"That's a good thing, is it?" asked Amelia, responding to his scowl with a wink.

The paladin took a deep breath. "I'll be your sword."

"And I'll be your shield."

They turned and kicked the doors open.


	5. Everybody Wants To Rule The World

**Symmetry**

**Chapter Five: Everybody Wants To Rule The World**

The phrase 'sword and shield' was an old one for them, from a promise they had made while travelling with Eirika and Ephraim a year earlier. It was how they fought, a strategy that hadn't yet failed, and made decisions very easy. When the throne room door burst open, Franz's eyes immediately settled on the dark-cloaked man standing at the other end of the room, facing away from them. As the sword, the paladin narrowed his focus, shut out everything else in the great court, and ran for the stranger.

He had nothing to fear from any other foe, especially not after that unusual promotion in the armory. Amelia forced herself to ignore the dark mage; she was the shield, and anything that tried to hurt or hinder Franz in his charge was going to find their insides a bit draughty, due to their new lance-sized ventilation system. The first volunteer was a giant brigand, who tried to bisect both the young soldiers with a single, wide swing.

Franz dropped onto his back, let the blade fly overhead, rolled back up, and continued his run. Amelia, who was feeling less charitable the more she saw petrified friends scattered around the castle, leapt up, boosted herself off the giant axehead, landed briefly with one foot on each of the murderous behemoth's shoulders, and thrust down. Mercenaries came at them next; she put her extra reach to use and knocked them cold with the haft of her lance.

A surprisingly small axe-wielder blocked Franz's path; seeing that Amelia was busy keeping another five mercs off his back, the paladin spared a moment to drive his fist into the warrior's face, and was as surprised as you'd think when it didn't flinch. What did happen was that its now-crumpled faceplate fell away, revealing nothing but stormy darkness and bright yellow eyes.

It screeched at him, a sound like a pair of cats fighting inside bagpipes being played very badly.

"Hmm," Franz remarked, and sliced the phantom's head off. The shadows burst, its axe and armor crumbled to dust, and he moved on. The dark mage – apparently a summoner – finally turned as Franz approached, as though he had only just noticed the brawl erupting behind him. A firm believer in asking questions later, Franz swung his sword fiercely, and didn't care for the summoner's calm gesture, which flared black and sent his blade rocketing the other way. Franz managed to keep his grip, used the new momentum to come around the other way, and was once again waved away.

Watching the other Carcino soldiers edge away from the battlefield, Amelia smiled and concussed her last foe. "Yeah, it's about time you started running," she called as they broke ranks and fled to the door. "Not that any of you are worth the trouble, but at least you're saving us some time by–"

"_Hhhhssshhhh…_" Amelia realised that she hadn't looked around in several seconds, and thus had placed herself in the most traditional stupid and vulnerable position in history. The recruit spun and had the sense to bring her weapon up as soon as she recognised the dark-scaled mass of a giant Gorgon. With a twist, she intercepted both of its snakehead-hands with the lance shaft, though sheer coiled muscle sent Amelia sprawling across the floor with a deafening outburst of profanity.

Franz turned his head to check on her. "Was that _you_?" he asked, startled, and then leapt aside as Flux magic burst from the floor beneath his feet; the dark mage had attacked while his attention was diverted. It stayed very thoroughly diverted once he saw the beast. "…Oh. That thing is seriously huge."

The summoner – not that Franz or Amelia noticed – grasped something on a chain around his neck and growled "Kill them both. I have no time to waste." The Gorgon shrieked its agreement and rushed Amelia, but it's difficult to slither up any great force, and she held her ground this time. A brief gleam appeared in the monster's eyes as she batted at its grasping claws, and the recruit instinctively looked away. The gleam became a flash.

"_No!_" Franz shouted, as the curse enveloped her and…

…Nothing happened, actually.

"What?" the summoner growled. "Oh. Right. Well, so be it." He turned to face the wall again, gesturing vaguely with his arms and staring at details that did not appear to be changing in the slightest.

Amelia noticed that she hadn't been petrified, and took advantage of the Gorgon's apparent surprise to smack its jaw with her lance, but the blow bounced off. Not to be deterred, she struck at the beast's eyes, fending it off long enough to get herself out of the corner. Amelia wasn't sure what their tactics were now; the summoner seemed to have shrugged away Franz's attacks, but this Gorgon was no easier to kill, and even if they could, it wouldn't bring the dark mage's plot to an end.

"Franz – don't look," she said, joining him in the clear middle of the hall.

"Oh." He obediently shut his eyes.

"I _mean_ at the Gorgon!" Amelia snapped, her impatience not quite drowning out her amusement. "It's got to make eye contact to Stone you."

"You're sure you're all right?" he asked.

"How do I look?" Franz tilted his head slightly as he stared at her, something Amelia put an end to when a faint smile started to form around the edges of his mouth. "Oh, stop it. We have to find a way to kill that creature."

"Higher priority!" the paladin yelped, pushing her aside and stabbing through another phantom warrior preparing to chop into Amelia. "I thought I killed that already."

"That's why they're called summoners," said Amelia. "They get to do it more than once."

"Only one at a… time… though…" Franz trailed off as the dark mage raised both hands and absentmindedly conjured a pair of the spectral soldiers. "I really, really hate it when this sort of thing happens. Villains should play by the rules."

The phantoms backed up the Gorgon on each side, as if twenty-foot unholy snake monsters need assistance. Franz forced himself not to look at the monster's eyes, which was the sort of thing you only _ever_ got an urge to do when you knew you weren't supposed to. He focused on the throne room, empty of all but the royal seat of power and a few pillars. And the people and creatures that wanted to kill them. He was feeling distinctly low on resources.

At times like this, Seth's advice was a good thing to fall back on: _Weapons in the hands of your foes are simply pointed in the wrong direction, and it is your duty to see them used to their full potential._ Maybe they couldn't cut through this monster's scales, but the strength of a wraith-warrior was on a whole new scale. "Hold back," Franz murmured, as he and Amelia slowly retreated from the approaching trio. "Can't explain, just watch."

The paladin charged ahead, thankful that he was still short enough that it was easy not to meet the Gorgon's eyes. He ducked the monster's claws, blocked a swing from the phantom, ignored the opportunity to strike back, and baited it into another attack. This one was a wild horizontal slash, and Franz rolled underneath it, letting the wraith's axe smash into the Gorgon's iron-grey scales. They cracked, and a drop of sizzling coppery blood trickled through.

Briefly the Gorgon lost interest in Franz, shrieking as it smote the clumsy phantom into dusty nothingness. Clearly not paying attention, the summoner waved again, and another one rose from a magic circle, marching mechanically into battle. Amelia caught this one's attention, using her natural (and recently superpowered) agility and combat technique to draw it close, pinning herself between the Gorgon and phantom, and then getting the heck out of there while the two struck at each other.

"You come up with the best plans," she remarked to Franz as this next phantom was obliterated by a lash of the monster's tail. "Hey, maybe if we enrage it enough it'll start going after the phantoms automatically… uh-oh." A sphere of air around Amelia had gone dark, as another, darker dimension tried to infringe on this one. Rather than stick around to see the rest of the Gorgon's Demon Surge spell – a rush of absolute shadow, then pink lightning and savage winds – she rolled away and flattened herself against the floor. Franz moved to intercept yet another phantom, shredding it in just a few moments.

Demon Surge blasted the throne room's floor, sending stone shards flying in all directions, which was why Amelia had dropped flat and mostly out of the way. The safe thing to do, the smart thing, Franz knew, would have been to crouch behind his new white-and-gold shield, and let it take the shrapnel, but monsters were notoriously vulnerable immediately after casting a spell.

He charged the Gorgon, feeling hot needles of rock _ping_ off his armor and stab searingly between its plates. He didn't have the time to think through what would happen when he jumped, although it made sense at an instinctive level. Feeling something hostile and living grab its arm, the Gorgon's natural response was to haul him the rest of the way up, where he wouldn't be able to escape petrifaction. The green paladin rose into view, and a silver point grew very large, very quickly.

Franz hit the ground badly, falling twelve feet flat onto his back, but the spattering of blood across his breastplate declared the attack worth it. The Gorgon, now minus one dark eye, shrieked in pain and attempted to carve its name – someone's name, at least, provided it had lots of 'I's and 'X's – into his chest, but his paladin armor stood up to the assault long enough for him to scramble away, fighting to refill his lungs.

"You can do the next one," he groaned, as Amelia used her lance to simultaneously help him up and take the head off a phantom.

"I intend to," she replied. "But unless you've got a cloth and polish, I'll need your oh-so-gleaming shield. I was thinking, we should be able to reflect its own Stone spell back on it, shouldn't–"

Amelia's plan was cut off sharply as an immense block of marble hit her like a battering ram. Horrified, Franz looked the other way to see the second phantom, which had used its axe and inhuman strength to carve out half of one of the room's pillars. They weren't important enough to bring the ceiling falling in, especially with just one gone, but still had the weight of sturdiness. He dashed to where the block had stopped by the wall, praying that Amelia wasn't under it.

"Come on, come on, those voices _said_ it…" he muttered, stumbling slightly in the debris.

She was free, sprawled in the narrow space between the pillar's broken end and the sheer wall, but she was motionless and looked more like a battered puppet than a brave knight. As he watched, a drop of blood trickled out between two armor plates. On the far side of Amelia, the giant dark Gorgon slithered into view.

"_Hhhsssssshhhh_," it suggested. Franz took no more than half a second to think of a rebuttal, and barely more time to deliver it. He leapt ahead, bashing the creature's arm aside with his shield when it struck out at him, and began a berserk offensive that would have made Ephraim take notes. Where the phantom's axes had already cracked and broken the beast's scales, Franz made the fractures wider, drove his blade deeper.

"Where is that entrance?" the summoner muttered, demanding that the chamber reveal its secrets, apparently unaware of the battle unfolding behind him.

The Gorgon retreated in surprise, finding that Franz was still aware enough of his actions to put his strong shield to use, and wasn't bothering to look up and make himself available to petrifying eyes. He wasn't really doing it terrible harm, but that darting, shining sword was bringing the monster agony every time it cut. As Franz raised his blade for a hammering blow, the Gorgon literally turned tail and used its body as a weapon. The tail caught him under his arm and smacked the paladin across the room, where he skidded to a halt against the stairs that led to the thrones of Renais.

Franz raised his head, trying to shake away the stars obscuring his view and making the floor stay still. Unfortunately, the first anchor he could lock his gaze on was the dark grey scales of the Gorgon, slithering forward to tower over him. Franz tried to bring up his shield, but it was lying discarded, too far away for him to retrieve before the beast's next strikes. Shrieking in predatory satisfaction, the Gorgon reared up, its arms raised before the plunge.

Directly behind Franz, the wall between the twin thrones vanished with a sound like a sharp breath, and Princess Eirika lunged into view, blade first. Shining Sieglinde cut through the air like the lightning it had been forged in, drove almost as quickly through the Gorgon's scales to burn through its back. She twisted the sparking sword, turning its edge vertical, and swung upward in a long semicircle that split the now-glowing monster from its middle through its head. Silent for the first time yet, the Gorgon glowed completely white and burst like a firework.

The summoner whirled on them, first taking in the open door (with triumph), then the presence of Eirika (with amusement), and then the abysmal shortage of giant dark Gorgons in the area (with utter incredulity). "Looking for _this_?" the princess suggested harshly, twirling Sieglinde so that its tip left behind a radiant circle in the air.

"Actually, I was more interested in the Sacred Stone," the summoner growled.

"What? _Another_ one of you people? Don't you know what happened to the scholars in Grado?" she demanded, stalking across the room.

"Fools who had no idea what they were attempting to control. Besides, Princess, you've made my job so much easier by destroying the material husk of Fomortiis. The Demon King's spirit is truly trapped; it can never take physical form again. It's perfect. All the secrets of the universe will be revealed to me."

Eirika glanced for a moment back at Franz, who still looked deeply dazed. There were some things princesses shouldn't be heard to say. "You want secrets? I'll reveal a _secret_ for you. I'm about to kick your–"

"_Not_ while I hold the high ground, so to speak," said the summoner. He snapped his fingers and the doors to the throne room –Eirika didn't remember anyone closing them – swung open, revealing his second phantom, who had been absent from battle for some time, and the stone body of Seth. "Let's consider the situation, princess. Your army is petrified. So is your brother. Your remaining allies are all days away from here. You cannot hope to hold me in this castle. You will bring the Sacred Stone to the southern border between Renais and Carcino, at the crossing of the Whisperwash."

"And trade it to you in exchange for my… general?" said Eirika, hesitating for just a moment. "You're going to be making a slow escape, with your phantoms carrying him all the way there."

"That's true," the summner agreed theatrically, as though he hadn't thought of that before now. "Let's simplify things." He slashed his hand out to the side, and in response the phantom brought its axe around in a horizontal sweep that took Seth's head off at the neck. Eirika barely stifled a scream. "Understand?" the summoner demanded. "You have until the curse ends to bring me the Stone, or else your… _general_" –he drew out the princess's hesitation mockingly– "will return to the realm of the living just long enough to suffer the most belated death by beheading in Magvel's history."

Eirika charged him. The summoner fled instantly, thrusting out an arm in her direction long enough to call up his second phantom, who barrelled directly into the princess and bore her to the ground. It tried to bash her with its helmet, but she grabbed the wraith by its transparent neck and was possibly going to be the first person ever to successfully strangle a ghost when someone else stabbed the creature in the back. She looked up through the dissipating smoke at Rennac, who helped her up.

"Well, this isn't going according to plan," he remarked.

Eirika laid him out with one punch.

"_Ow!_ I said _not_ going to plan!" the rogue repeated from the floor, rubbing his cheek.

"You treacherous snape," the princess growled.

"…You mean, 'snake'?"

"I said snape and I meant snape!"

Their impending brawl was cut short by an anguished cry that echoed off the ancient smooth walls. Franz had stumbled back to Amelia, and if possible, she looked worse. The flow of blood had continued, her face was pale, and she didn't seem to be breathing. He gripped her arm, praying that his fingers were just too numb to feel a pulse. The tips of her fingers were getting cold.

"No… no, come on, you said this wouldn't happen, you blasted voices, you said she'd never break, you can't _do this, you can't let this happen!_" He knelt beside her, looking almost as broken as the soldier, his head bowed. Eirika was shocked to find that she couldn't move, couldn't think of a thing to say. How had this happened? Amelia should have been out training somewhere in the marshes, Franz should have been rallying the knights out on… okay, that was an easy connection to make. They had obviously met up and come back. But now they were here, and Eirika couldn't even think as she watched the last of the youngest knight's life…

"Are you going to use this or not?" Rennac asked irritably, shaking a flask at Franz again.

"Don't trust him, he's already betrayed us!" Eirika barked out, her silence broken by righteous anger.

"Princess," the rogue snapped, "assume for a moment that I've been telling you the truth all along and lying to that dark mage we just saw the back of, will you? I'm trying to save a life." He turned back to Franz. "Now. Quickly. Look, this is L'Arachel's personal seal – do you think even I could steal something like that?" His eyes promising that lethal retribution was still an option, Franz took it. "Use it the ordinary way; this stuff makes elixirs look like fruit juice."

Carefully but quickly, Franz tried to get Amelia to drink from the flask. The liquid inside didn't seem to be anything except diamond-clear water, and nothing noteworthy happened as he poured, until the flask was half-empty, at which point the super-recruit sputtered and made a face of confused distaste.

"That is really cloyingly sweet," she stated, trying to scrape her tongue clean with her teeth. "Agh." She looked straight up to see the merchant-prince from Carcino sitting on the very piece of wreckage that had smashed her to begin with. "Oh. Hey, Rennac. What are you doing here?"

"Long story that Eirika won't believe," he said casually. "You feel at all dead?"

"No," she replied, frowning with the touch of are-you-crazy that this question deserved, "but I can't really remember how the end of that battle went. Maybe I should get a helmet–"

At which point Franz's ecstatic-disbelief-paralysis ran out and he tackled Amelia directly from his kneeling position. Eirika's eyebrows shot up at the embrace that followed, but she managed to convince herself that she this was the sort of thing she just didn't find out about when the bureaucracy broke down for a day. Obviously that put Franz on Rennac's side.

"All right," she said to the rogue. "Convince me you're not a traitor."

Rennac sighed and shifted himself, stretching out to loll on the top of the broken pillar. "Are you really going to believe me, whatever I may say? The _truth_ is that soon after arriving home after our little monster-slaying jaunt around the continent, I got pulled into some complicated family matters. That summoner who just made off with General Seth's head is my uncle. Old Psycho Arnord."

"Considering what he just pulled, I'm not surprising you're related," Eirika muttered. "And why did you – will you two at least _pretend_ that some shred of decorum is a possibility?"

"Sorry! Sorry, m'lady," said Franz, abruptly letting go of Amelia and climbing to his feet. She followed, grinning at the paladin's sudden embarrassment and nodding her compliance toward the princess.

"So I was dead?" Amelia asked Rennac.

"Just barely not. If there's one thing Lady L'Arachel knows how to do that doesn't involve blowing up monsters, it's the healing blessing of Saint Latona," he replied.

"Why did you choose to help him?" Eirika persisted.

Rennac sighed again; clearly he liked the image far too much. "Because it was better for you to have an agent on the inside than not. Because I convinced him to use his pet Gorgon to petrify all your soldiers instead of killing them, and because he was supposed to get here and get completely thrashed because I convinced him I didn't know where the Sacred Stone was. No one told _me_ he could summon multiple phantoms, and that trick with Seth came out of nowhere. You'll notice that, if he hadn't had time to get a hostage, he would currently be lying… over there, I think, asking you very nicely not to thrash him any more."

"And why didn't you just warn us in advance? Would it have been that hard to get a message out?" the princess demanded.

"No, it wouldn't, once we were on the march," Rennac admitted, in the voice that they all knew meant he couldn't believe the idiocy of those around him. "And that would have led to what? A long and arduous siege with the two mightiest mercenary companies of Carcino against the Renais elites. What do you want to bet you'd have lost people by the end of that? They would take hostages from nearby villages, they would play to your weaknesses – you've got them, like all good people – and some of your friends would be dead by now, don't you think? And me."

"You think you're quite clever, don't you?" she growled.

"Yes. I think I've dealt with a potentially hideous situation without anyone dying and without my behated uncle getting his hands on the Sacred Stone. Very neat, in my opinion," said Rennac.

"Fantastic," Eirika muttered. She noticed Franz and Amelia again. "…Franz, you can stop saluting, now."

"Thank you, m'lady!" said the paladin, lowering his arm at last.

"I didn't pay much attention to military affairs back then, but I have the distinct feeling that you have a lot in common with Seth when he was fifteen," she observed.

"I'm actually almost seventeen, m'lady." Franz had calmed down enough to stop using exclamation marks for every sentence.

"Mm-hmm," said Eirika, staring at him with meaningful blankness. "All right. Let's assume for the moment that I'm going to trust you, Rennac, keeping in mind that if I feel it's necessary this trust could immediately transform into violent retribution that you would not survive intact. Is there still an army holding the castle?"

"Um… actually, Princess, we dealt with most of them," said Amelia. She distantly realised that this was only the third time she had ever spoken directly to one of the royal twins.

"You what?" asked Eirika, as if she had misheard them.

"We… pretty much thrashed the remainder of the invading forces. The ones that you – your highness, I mean, and Sir Seth – hadn't already defeated. And there are quite a lot of them outside. We locked them in the courtyard."

"How did you – never mind," Eirika cut herself off, realising it would be a long story. "Excellent work, both of you. And I mean brilliant. Rennac, can you–"

"I can handle the rest of the troops, yes," the merchant-prince agreed. "They're on contract to my family, not just my uncle. Should I send them back to Carcino?"

"You might as well – wait, no, I don't want to risk them walking off with royal treasures. Just have them stand down, and make camp on the fields outside. Blasted mercenaries, I can never tell when they're evil and when they're not. Now, what about this Whisperwash?"

"That's the river in the mountains north of here; it draws the border between Renais and Carcino. Arnord probably has yet another one of his little workshop-lairs hidden around there. He'll get another pet monster and wait to ambush you, I'm sure."

"Ambush? He said he wanted to trade; why wouldn't he want us to save Seth?" Eirika asked.

"He'd see it as a pre-emptive action. You're sure to have tricks planned for him, so a good ambush will neutralise things and give him back his excellent bargaining position," Rennac explained.

"And what did you say about pet monsters?"

"His greatest achievement so far is that amulet; it lets him dominate the usually-chaotic mind of a monster and issue it commands. I was the one who suggested a gorgon and the petrifying strategy. He was the one who imbued it with dark might and immense durability. Now, can we get going? Have we covered everything?" the rogue asked sarcastically.

"He's got Seth's _head_?" Franz demanded, just making the connection between the decapitated paladin statue and talk of 'saving Seth'.

"And if we don't give him the Sacred Stone within two days, the curse wears off and General Seth dies," said Rennac.

"How neat," Amelia remarked. She managed to turn them comment into a ghastly insult.

"All right," said Eirika. "I've got a plan forming. And yes, I intend to take up this Arnord freak on his trade idea, which means someone has to stay behind to explain the situation to the knights – the knights are coming back, right?"

"Affirmative, m'lady! Passed your orders on to Sergeant Faval!" Franz reported. Amelia forcibly stopped him from saluting again.

"Faval really liked you, didn't he?" she asked, quietly.

"Top of the class in orienteering," he replied with a grin.

"Then someone will have to tell them where I'm going, search those mercenaries to make sure they're not thieving, and send them back on their way to Carcino," Eirika stated.

"I'm going to help rescue General Seth," Franz volunteered-insisted.

"I'm going too," Amelia seconded.

"You'll need my advice," Rennac added.

"Well, there's no way I'm staying," the princess said. "And everyone else is petrified for another day at the least."

Rennac shuffled his feet, looking uncomfortable. Eirika took a moment to enjoy the sight before insisting he give it up. "Well… not _everyone_, exactly…"

* * *

"My brother is always grumpy right after he wakes up, Rennac," said Franz, helping Amelia load the majority of Seth's granite body into the cart. "Don't take it personally."

"Forde wasn't asleep, you miniature war hero, he was locked in a closet," said the rogue, clutching his head and wishing strongly for a ice pack. "I don't see what he's complaining about, myself; it was that or turn _him_ to stone, too."

"Paladin pride," said Amelia, securing the Seth-statue with rope. "You could bend horseshoes around it. And unless I misunderstood the bit where he had you writhing on the floor, shouting at him not to dislocate your shoulders, you did knock him out with a single punch."

"I'm not sure this is a good plan," said Rennac, trying to change the subject.

"Right, but Eirika's the princess of Renais and you're a professional layabout, so hush up and climb aboard," the soldier ordered him.

"You know, I saved your life," he reminded her, taking a seat beside Seth.

"Oh, we're grateful," said Amelia. She noticed Franz's expression. "Well, I'm grateful. Franz may build a small shrine to you in the dungeons or something."

Princess Eirika entered the now-mercenary-free courtyard with iron determination in her step. "Right. I've instated Forde as temporary steward of Renais, for which I have no doubt Kyle will never fully forgive me. The Stone is with me" –she patted a side-satchel of the kind Franz made for many Renais soldiers– "and we have less than two days to find and give Arnord the smiting he's earned. Let's go."

"Um… horses?" Rennac suggested, sarcastically nodding at the cart's empty harness.

Eirika glared at him and raised her Lunar Bracelet, which gleamed silver and summoned a white horse from a blur of light. It was the avatar of the bracelet's power, hers to call on as a Great Lord, and would not be tired by a mere thirty-hour charge across wild country and mountain paths. Rennac shrugged and clambered the rest of the way onto the carriage's roof, possibly trying to put more distance between himself and the supernatural horse.

The sun was setting as they rolled out of Renais, turning immediately north to the first of the mountain ranges. With Eirika at the front, directing their path, the inside of the carriage was left to Amelia, Franz, and Seth, who was even quieter than usual, for obvious reasons. They settled into the corner and tried to find the jarring bouncing of the wheels over rocks soothing.

"I'm exhausted," Franz murmured, his arm around her, "but I don't think there's any chance of… mm… sleep… after all that…" Amelia laughed, not loudly enough to disturb the paladin's instantaneous drop into unconsciousness. Paladin pride indeed. If it weren't for the princess's plans, Franz would probably try to carry Seth to the border himself…

In the clattering darkness, she snored.


	6. Evidence of Things Not Seen

**Symmetry**

**Chapter Six: Evidence of Things Not Seen**

"They're sweet, aren't they?" asked Rennac, leaning over the edge of the cart to glimpse Franz and Amelia, still dozing in the space not occupied by petrified paladin.

"Is that rhetorical, or is your snakelike mind actually not able to tell?" Eirika snapped back, trying to haul the spirit-horse around a bend in the forest road. Her Lunar mount was amazingly strong and fast, but had an irritating tendency to assume that just because it could leap chasms twenty feet across, so could everything it was pulling.

"I know cute when I see it, thank you. They're adorable and you know it, so stop being all spiky. I'm helping you, aren't I? I've been helping you all along, haven't I? And we've still got most of Sir Seth, with plenty of time to beat Arnord senseless and pick up the last twentieth," the rogue summarised.

"_It's an important twentieth!_"

"I think it's stress, myself. When I finally got back home after our little jaunt to save the entire world, I did some reading on psychology. Studying the mind. I was hoping to figure out if Princess L'Arachel is curable."

Eirika stopped. At least, she froze briefly, whereas the horse kept them moving at close to wind-speed. "That sounds serious. What's she got?"

"She's Princess L'Arachel," said Rennac. "That _is_ an affliction. Anyway, I'm reasonably certain you've got a complex."

"Complex?" Eirika barked. "This is far beyond complex. This is like trying to solve a dwarf's riddle while picking the lock on an iron box made of knotted chains while hanging upside down from–"

"I thought the plan was to hit him until he gave you Seth's head."

"Shut up!"

"See, a _casual_ observer would think that you resist your attraction to Sir Seth because he's your retainer and you've got to maintain distance and decorum and duty and it's inappropriate for nobles to associate like that with commoners…" said Rennac, rolling over on the cart's roof like a self-satisfied cat. "Those same people would probably say that you can't reconcile the whole duty question inside your own head, and so you refuse to admit to yourself that he's anything like important to you, even though you actually _know_ it at a much deeper level."

"You're starting with an interesting premise there," Eirika hissed.

"Well, what can you say? Casual observers are idiots," the rogue went on. "It doesn't take much to see that it's really all about Innes."

"_INNES!_"

"Oh, don't look so shocked; it's really pretty simple. You've always had repressed feelings for Innes, which reciprocally manifested themselves as your constant support of your brother in all their contests, not to mention your friendship with Princess Tana. You've got Innes surrounded on all fronts, but you demand that he overcome your brother first, and then it does get tricky because of Sir Seth, who thinks you really want him, when your rejections of Innes are really just meant to motivate the prince. Poor deluded Seth, on the other hand, poses a threat to your subconscious plan, because he–"

"That - is - _enough!_" the princess roared, leaping to her feet on the driver's seat. "Without meaning any disrespect to Prince Innes, I have stronger feelings for a _statue_ of Seth than I do for him, and I will not just stand by and let you – let your demented uncle – let _anyone_ talk about us like that! Look at me! I'm riding north toward the enemy's stronghold with no army, no preparations, and the _Sacred Stone of Renais_ in a bag! Of course I would try to save any knight, but this is ridiculously unsafe! Do you think I would do this for _anyone_? The man has almost died for me more times than you've spoken with respect! Yes, I love him, and you don't get to create insane… you don't… you… bloody… rogues…" She turned away from Rennac and sat down again. "…I just admitted it, didn't I?"

"Feel better?" he inquired. The princess sat perfectly straight and motionless as she directed them through the forest paths toward the Carcino border. She was steady as a rock, in spite of the rough road, tempting Rennac to start stacking things on her head. "It's not like you said anything I didn't already know."

Eirika shook her head. "I don't know… Have I made a mistake?" Rennac just snorted, all the princess needed to hear to be reminded that he did not, under any circumstances, actually care what anyone's feelings were. Whatever he had just done was about ensuring his own survival, in one way or another. "I _meant_ in bringing the Sacred Stone with me. It does contain the soul of Fomortiis, after all."

"Well, there's an interesting little exercise in absoluteness," Rennac mused. "Were you 'right' to charge off madly with the Fire Emblem in your pocket to save one knight, or would it be 'right' to let him die now that you realise you did it for selfish reasons? First, we'll have to determine whether or not there's such a thing as 'right'–"

At this point Amelia had halfway-clambered out of the window on one side of the cart and shoved him toward the other side, where Franz grabbed him by the arms and hauled the rogue inside.  
Complicated scuffling sounds accompanied Rennac's protests, which quickly transformed into muffled yelps. Eirika recalled that Franz carried bolts of cloth in his satchel, mostly for field bandages but more than once used to gag prisoners. The new paladin leaned out the window again.

"Uh… princess?" he said cautiously.

"Yes?"

"I'm with you on this one." An unseen hand gave him a light shove into the windowframe. "_Oof_. Right. _We_ are with you on this one. …And there are worse reasons to do something than love."

"Like… all of them," Amelia added from within.

"Weren't you two supposed to be asleep?" Eirika asked.

"You were shouting for a _really_ long time," Franz explained, before the hand yanked him back in again. The shadow of a smile flickered around the edges of the princess's lips. Maybe Rennac did have his good points.

* * *

At the crossing of the Whisperwash, where the river plummeted over a cliff, splashed down in a spectacularly clear pool, and ran on to the west, the lone bridge guard was having a relaxing morning in his shack, re-reorganising his colour-stained ticket-sheets for a variety of border-crossing infractions. This probably tells you more about him than he would want you to know. But the Whisperwash was an unpopular place to get from Renais into Carcino, and it had been so long since he saw anyone, other than that magely character who walked in the woods, that he had forgotten which government he worked for. On quiet afternoons, he sometimes mused that it might have been Rausten.

He remembered this particular day for a long time afterwards, especially in the middle of night when he woke up hiding under the bed with his blankets packed in around the sides, clutching sharp objects and trying not to breathe. For one thing, it was his last day on the job.

It began with an axe blade, swung with inhuman force through the corner beam, half the north wall, and collapsing enough of the structure to break all the windows. For the first shocking moments, the guard wondered if he was the target of a freak tornado, but then the roof was ripped off and a single blazing eye replaced the sun overhead, set in a face like diseased stone. The behemoth smashed aside another wall, crushed the fiery hot stove underfoot without taking notice of the embers pressed against its flesh, and picked him up with its free hand.

"No!" A flicker of hope gave the guard the strength to shake off his terrified paralysis, but it didn't last long. "Put him down! No! Disobedient cyclops! _Bad_ cyclops! You follow my orders now!" The one-eyed giant froze, cleaver in one hand and guard in the other, waiting for the next thought to arrive. Eventually it put him down with bone-snapping awkwardness and turned to face the summoner standing nearby.

The guard reached a conclusion. "_AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHGGHH!_" he screamed.

"I was hoping for a little more subtlety," the summoner muttered to himself. "The sheer power of a cyclops can't be denied, but they're so much harder to control than gorgons…"

"_AAHAAAGHAAAHH!_"

The summoner looked at him sharply. "Run now," Arnord recommended.

"Ahhaaagh," the guard shrieked calmly, nodded once, and sprinted for Rausten.

* * *

"Down to business," said Eirika as she finally forced the spirit-horse to skid to a halt, after long hours on the road. "Rennac, what sorts of defences will your demented relative have ready for us?" The forest glade they had stopped in was rather less peaceful and pristine than it had been before the arrival of a high-speed cargo cart and hooves trampling six times a second, but it was as close to the border as the princess dared get without at least pretending to be stealthy.

She noticed in the moments that followed that no one was irritating her yet. Considering that she had actually invited him to talk, this was a rarity for Rennac. Possibly a small miracle, or at least a freak of nature. "…Rennac?"

"Um…"

"Franz, take the gag off him."

"There's a slight problem…"

"Amelia, if he's asleep, poke him with your lance," she commanded.

"He's gone," the recruit reported.

Eirika tried this explanation out. "…He's _what_? How? I thought you had shackled him to the- well, the shackles." She leapt down from the driver's seat, came around to the back of the cart, and threw the doors open. The iron rings set into the floorboards had a certain _picked_ look, and the young soldiers standing guard over nineteen-twentieths of General Seth had an accompanying _flamingly embarrassed_ look.

"I'm not really sure when he got out," Franz admitted.

"Let me guess why _that_ is," Eirika said rhetorically, but she softened when she saw the paladin's heart sink so far that it discovered fossils of a dozen species of ancient primal dragons before striking a diamond seam near the world's mantle. "It's not like you were watching an actual prisoner. Don't worry about it too much." _I'll handle that several times over._ She sighed. "Am I going to be able to depend on you two, at least?"

"Yes ma'am, princess," said Amelia. Franz nodded hard enough to sprain his spine. Despite the pair's over-enthusiastic response, the way they gripped their weapons spoke volumes to Eirika about how determined they were to come through this victorious.

"And no protesting my orders, right?" the princess prompted.

"Yes, ma'am," the said, not quite in unison.

"Including when they may separate you two at a critical moment?"

"Yes, ma'am," Amelia agreed. Franz opened his mouth, then hesitated. A fractional shift caused the recruit's lance to jab him lightly in the foot.

"_Yaah_!-es, ma'am," he yelped.

Eirika nodded and motioned for them to follow her into the last of the forest, toward the sound of rushing water. Fortunately, without any of them mounted or heavily armored like Duessel or Gilliam, the trio were able to sneak effectively among the trees, well enough that the princess knew - from an abundance of past experience - that few creatures as unsubtle as a monster would notice them.

Twenty minutes later, the trees thinned enough that Eirika could see the cliff ahead and smell the water on the air. This would be the Whisperwash that Rennac had told her about, then, and somewhere around here Arnord was waiting, with Seth's head, a monster, and some kind of trap in mind. He wasn't foolish enough to think Eirika wasn't walking in with a plan. …_So_, she could get an advantage by not _having_ a plan – the 'no-plan' plan had the advantage that the plan could never be foiled, whereas she was free to trip up Arnord at any moment.

But this wasn't just a skirmish, this was Seth's life on the line, and he only had a day left in his stone form. Could she risk him – and, some part of her mind vaguely recalled, the last Sacred Stone – on a non-plan of pure psychology? All it would take would be another gorgon to petrify Franz or Amelia, and even if she rescued Seth, Arnord would be able to make the same ultimatum again. She would have to scout the area, search for clues to what they were facing.

They followed the forest's edge, never leaving leafy cover, along the river for some distance, waiting to see a hidden tower or even just a campfire, something to suggest that there was anyone except squirrels out here. Roundabout the shattered and lightly smouldering ruins of an old guardhouse beside a rather trampled bridge, Eirika suspected they might have found something.

"…Princess?" Franz asked, when Eirika just crouched in the undergrowth instead of advancing.

"I'm trying to think like a megalomaniac," she replied.

"All right, but I don't think Lute has anything to do with this," the paladin remarked, before realising what he had said and slapping his hand over his mouth. Amelia snorted with laughter, but quickly muffled it. Briefly, Eirika considered scolding him, but this wasn't an ordinary mission. Besides, she hadn't felt like smiling – except in grim satisfaction for what felt like weeks.

Eventually she completed her survey, and cautiously moved out into the open. An inescapable hail of razor arrows failed to shower around her. At Eirika's gesture, Franz darted ahead to the ruins, his hand already on his sword. Hidden explosives very specifically did not erupt from the ground beneath him.

Something was definitely up.

"This doesn't make sense," the princess insisted. "If there aren't any traps set here, then why leave something so obvious smashed out in the open? We know Arnord must be around here somewhere."

"Maybe he didn't mean to destroy it?" Amelia suggested.

"Maybe it was his," Franz offered.

"No, there's no space for a magical workshop. He didn't make that amulet thing in a broom closet," the recruit countered.

"No scorch marks or withered wood – this wasn't destroyed by dark magic, or even anima, if he learned how to use that too. This wall, or at least what's left of it, was broken by an axe, but look, this cut goes for half the length of the side. You can't drag an axe through a house like that. It's got to be a chop."

"Phantoms don't have the arm length for that. And the roof looks, well, _ripped_. Like that time a hurricane hit the Grado coast and took houses apart. …Or those cyclopes from the southeast."

"And a cyclops' favourite weapon is an axe," Franz added.

"Which is just the sort of thing a freak like Arnord would want with him if he were feeling insecure," Amelia concluded.

"And probably uncontrollable enough that it would destroy a house accidentally, giving away his position before he wanted to!"

"You're going to want a bigger sword," she remarked.

"I think you're going to need to be taller," Franz countered.

"I'll stand on your shoulders."

Eirika stared. "…You two are good together." The young knights smiled at each other with satisfaction. "However, I got there first." She looked down. So did they. The three of them were standing in a single giant footprint. There were rather a lot more of them around the wreckage.

"Those could be meteor strikes," Franz said, not missing a beat.

"Not ones with toes, I'm betting." The princess looked around, but the forest was still unsettlingly free of _anything_. It would have been much simpler if she could spot a giant grey-green body between the trees, its head lost in the leafy canopy. Any summoner who was sufficiently prepared to _hide_ a cyclops obviously had chosen a well-made battlefield. For all she knew, they were standing on his subterranean lair.

* * *

"At last," Arnord sighed, leaning against the stone wall. He had the cyclops in position, and as completely under his control – and that of the amulet – as could be managed with such a tempestuous monster. The other defences were also prepared, and his workshop was ready to begin experimenting with the Sacred Stone as soon as it was in his hands.

"No kidding," said Rennac, resting a hand on his uncle's shoulder. Arnord, who had thought himself alone, jumped away from the wall to see Rennac similarly slouched against it, perfectly still in the shadows. "I've been waiting for ages."

"Where have you been?" the summoner demanded.

"Leading Eirika here. Didn't you realise that she wouldn't know the fastest route here on her own? Seth would have died while they were still on the road, and then you wouldn't be making a deal. You'd be facing up against the combined might of all Renais' armies, plus whoever Rausten and Jehanna sent - and that's if Queen Tana didn't call up a battalion of Pegasus knights," said the rogue, shaking his head. "Honestly."

"That's one thing you never are," Arnord fumed, pacing again. "Where are they, then? Do they know you're here?"

"Of course not. I slipped away to rendezvous with you. They're quite close. Are you ready?"

"I am beyond ready," said the summoner. "You'll lead them into position?"

"Only too gladly," said Rennac, grinning. "And then we discuss _my_ payment for this endeavour. I've switched sides so many times I don't know whether I'm stabbing people in the back or the heart."

"Tragic," Arnord scoffed. "Get to work."

"You've got the flasks?" Rennac double-checked.

"Of course. I am as accomplished an alchemist as any to have walked Magvel in a thousand years." Arnord produced a bulbous vial of some arcane mixture, a sulfuric yellow-green mixture that Rennac could not imagine being healthy for any living creature, but apparently the cyclops would find it an irresistibly offensive thing. The simplistically-minded beast couldn't imagine anything except obliterating anything that bore its scent, which was unlucky for the now-extinct flowers that had once made it naturally.

"And your amulet?" Rennac went on.

"Yes, yes!" the summoner snapped. "It's still somewhat unreliable, since I dominated the brute this morning, but that's what the potion is for anyway. Are you going or not?"

"And if I encounter trouble?"

"What kind of trouble!"

"Eirika's not so slow as to accept every single mysterious thing I do," the rogue explained.

"Just follow the tunnel." Arnord smiled grimly. "It's… well-prepared for visitors who can't follow the rules, and I can listen in from anywhere. At the first sign of trouble, I'll make them _terminally_ uncomfortable."

"A bad plan. She might not have the Stone with her – if it's not on the corpse, we're back where we started, with no idea where she's hidden it." Rennac thought for a moment. "Give me time to find out if she's carrying it or not – unless I'm about to be gutted, don't throw any switches until I say so."

"Bah," Arnord scoffed, but said nothing more of it. "However much I assist you, don't you think that this Lady L'Arachel will object to any suitor who betrayed her friends so many times?"

"Dead princesses tell no tales, uncle."

* * *

Underneath the waterfall, Eirika pressed her hands against the stone, shifting her touch, looking for the secret door that absolutely had to be there. "Come on… I _know_ how insane mages think, and this is the best place for a mile around. No one can resist a secret lair under a waterfall!"

"Wouldn't it make more sense to put it at the top of the cliff? Somewhere out of sight?" Amelia suggested.

"_Sense_ isn't something I've had a lot of contact with for a couple of days," Eirika replied. "Now where is the…" A great tremor shook through the earth, as though a giant had picked up the topsoil and shaken it out like a bedsheet. A gratified look appeared on Eirika's face, and she leapt back, waiting for the stone to open.

"Princess!" Franz called from outside the sheet of falling water. "Something's happening out here!"

She rushed out of the spray, practically steaming with frustration, to see that the perfectly clear pool had turned into a raging vortex, from the centre of which a stone outcropping was rising, the water rushing down its sides and outlining a steely inset door. When it was higher than the water level, the storm stopped, and even as the last drops sluiced down its side the door swung down, its edge close enough to the bank to leap across.

"Hurry up!" Rennac called from the shadowy portal. "Hang around any longer and you'll get to find out what Arnord has planned for you."

"What in blazes are you doing here?" Eirika blurted.

The rogue tilted his head sarcastically. "Yes, that's a _much_ better use of your time." He turned away and dropped out of sight, underground. The princess sighed, wondering if Rennac knew how to do anything but exasperate people, and leapt across to the door, beckoning for the other two to follow. Inside the rock spire there was only a tunnel leading down, with slippery rungs bolted to the stone. Eirika flew down them so fast she might as well have jumped into the light-choked darkness below.

At last, staggering with the unexpected impact, she reached the subterranean floor. "I knew it would be something like this. Summoners always think they're so clever."

"We should have brought torches," Franz muttered. "I should work in a torch-pocket for these satchels, just to make sure I've got one in an emergency."

"Sword now, sew later," Amelia reminded him.

"Where did you leave for without telling us?" Eirika demanded of Rennac, or at least the darkness where she guessed the rogue was.

"You're referring to my daring cart escape?" the rogue mused. "I couldn't stand watching those two any longer, if you must know. And I was able to let you inside the workshop, so don't complain." An amber light cut through the darkness as Rennac lit a lantern, several feet away from where the princess expected him. He gestured toward a stiflingly black tunnel. "Ladies first."

The princess hesitated. "I thought you were the one arguing that they were adorable."

"We're _right here_," Franz and Amelia reminded them loudly. Eirika looked from knights to rogue and back again, shrugged, and let Rennac's light guide her into the dank tunnel, echoing with the sounds of distantly rushing water. It wound around itself for a time, spiralling down until they had lost all sense of their direction on the surface, and the tunnel straightened out. The curved ceiling was uncomfortably low, and more than once Eirika thought she saw gleams of metal in the shadowed crags of the stone.

"Hold," said the princess, stopping abruptly in the cramped space. Slowly, she turned back to face Rennac, innocently quizzical, and Franz and Amelia, whose hands had made a quick and instinctive interpretation of her command. "…This isn't right. This is far too complicated to just be an entrance to a mage's workshop. Who puts a mile between his door and home?"

Rennac rolled his eyes, which gleamed rather sickly in the fiery glow, and leaned against the tunnel wall, letting the lamplight shine in a bright swath across his front. "I told you he was insane. What did you expect? A cloakroom, an umbrella stand, and a Well Met mat?"

For a moment, the air seemed tight to Eirika, like the hum of a bowstring wavering on the edge of release, or crack as a beam buckles under the weight of too great a load. Neither comparison seemed very promising, and she almost ordered them to turn around right there, but she hesitated. Rennac looked expectant, tapping his fingers lightly on the stone wall as the pony embroidered on his jacket seemed to dance in the lantern's flicker. "You're right. No sense turning back now."

The tension eased. It didn't vanish, but Eirika felt less like the shadows were trying to choke the air from her throat. Rennac urged her ahead, not a single gesture of his body suggesting that he knew she had taken them all perilously close to being trapped in a small space full of big spikes. Still Arnord listened, through the sound-channels in the stone, waiting to see how Eirika would die. 'Whether', of course, wasn't even on the table.

At last, a faint light appeared ahead, of a natural shade that suggested reflected sunshine. Eirika doubled her pace, barely caring for the long echoing _claps_ her boots made on the stone. The others rushed to catch up, but the princess was only beginning to wonder why Rennac wasn't cautioning her against racing into unknown danger when the tunnel opened into a great cavern, open at the very top, where grey-blue sky glowed and occasionally droplets of moisture collected and fell. A dull ray of light illuminated a strange bulky shape on the other side of the cavern.

"This is exceedingly unworkshoplike," Eirika said slowly, through gritted teeth. She turned on Rennac, who wore his signature insufferable grin.

"G'day!" he chirped with a jaunty wave, turned, shot between Franz and Amelia – he had to jump their already-rising weapons to do so – and back down the tunnel, which was quickly closed off as long metal prongs shot out of the walls behind him into a razor-sharp gate. It was dark without his lantern, but torches burst into flame on the walls around the room to make up for it.

The cyclops, which had been enjoying its rest in the darkness, responded in the first way it thought of, and let out an earth-breaking bellow.

"Oh, I _really_ don't think I'm tall enough for this one…" Amelia muttered as it came at them.


	7. Secrets Worth Knowing

**Symmetry**

**Chapter Seven: Secrets Worth Knowing**

Out of the torch-starred gloom the Cyclops came at them in a run, swinging its heavy axe in wide sweeps that could have felled long ranks of ordinary soldiers at a time. Fortunately for the knights and princess of Renais, it was as subtle as an elephant in clogs, and by the time it had rumbled its was across the cavern, the three had scattered in a disorienting burst.

_What do we do what do we do what do we do what do_ – Amelia cut herself off in mid-panic and took stock of their surroundings, which took a depressingly short time. The underground chamber was almost completely bare, except for their now-blocked entrance, the torches, and occasional banks of spikes set into the rounded walls for no obvious reason, except to make it clear to anyone looking for the broom closet that they had gotten lost. _Fine,_ she thought, gripping her lance tightly. _The bigger they are, the harder they – oh, to heck with it_. She stabbed the confused monster in the back of one giant leg.

With surprising efficiency, the behemoth pivoted and swung its axe at her like a pendulum; Amelia yanked her lance out of its near-bloodless flesh and rolled backwards out of harm's way. Fortunately, Franz came at it from the side, placing a deep gash on its arm before the beast even noticed he was there. Like Amelia, his weapon bit deeply, but the Cyclops didn't seem at all concerned, and when Franz withdrew and struck again, no blood flowed from either wound.

"Princess!" Franz shouted. "I don't think we're dealing with an ordinary monster here!"

_Come to think of it, why isn't Lady Eirika just using Sieglinde on it like before?_ wondered Amelia. She spotted the princess circling around the monster, her everyday rapier in hand, but the recruit didn't believe for a moment that she had forgotten her sacred weapon in her other suit of armor, so what was going on? _No time for that._ "Franz, bait it!"

When the virtues of the Renais knight called Franz are listed, somewhere around the top should be a note that, when asked by his partner and rival – all right, she's more than those, but the point, the actual point – to act as bait for a twenty-foot walking guillotine and given no particular reason why, he ran in close, stabbed it in the foot, and was prepared to start impugning its family honour. The fact that the Cyclops immediately tried to behead him made the last step unnecessary.

Even as Franz threw up his shield, leapt out of the way, and prayed for the divine light to have mercy on brave idiots, Amelia pounced, wrapped her arms around its tree-trunk-thick wrist, and let the monster haul her up to ceiling height. There was something strange about its skin under her fingers – she knew from the start this would be another bad day for her already-weatherbeaten hands – but she didn't have time to think about that.

Given a boost on its flailing arm, Amelia scrambled to get a foothold and forced herself down toward the beast's torso by sheer willpower. It moved under her feet, making balance more of a hope than a fact at any given moment, but Franz kept the Cyclops manoeuvring and watching, never getting close enough to him to strike. The recruit had just enough time to heave herself onto the creature's shoulder before it tried to fling her off again, and only seconds before it could do the same with a simple shrug – seconds she used to knock its head back with a kick and drive her lance into its eye.

"Oh, that's just wrong," said Amelia in astonishment. Shards and dust crumbled away from the point where she had thrust, but the Cyclops didn't seem at all perturbed. Its single giant eye wasn't the disgusting substance she expected to be leaking all over her boots, but mere stone with a garnet iris and empty black pupil. A stone eye set in a stone face. The entire golem was as solid as its mountain home.

"Amelia? What is it?" Franz called from below.

She stared as the golem blinked once, slowly, without appearing to have a care in the world for the hole in its eye. Then it swung a massive fist to smash the pesky human standing on its shoulders. Amelia dropped, but stabbed out again with her lance with such force that it drove into the monster's granite chest and held, suspending her there.

"The whole blasted thing is rock!" she bellowed. "Where's Eirika?"

"She's…" Franz realised that he, a paladin and brevet commander, had lost track of the princess of Renais. "…Busy somewhere else! I say we chop its legs off and go from there!"

"Great," Amelia muttered, and tried desperately to fold herself up tightly enough to dodge the Cyclops' clumsy swings at slashing her off its chest. "You know, lances don't really _chop_ all that well!"

"Do you have a different plan?" Franz asked, somehow avoiding any trace of sarcasm.

All around the domed cavern, the torches burst to greater blazes, revealing the monster's stony nature more clearly, and casting long, jagged shadows from the thickets of spikes that jutted out in all directions where the floor and wall met. The sharp-edged darkness seemed to create hundreds of long, thin strips of light that ran from the edges to the very centre of the cavern.

It almost seemed appropriate that the Sacred Stone lay there, unattended, almost looking unwanted.

"Oh, bloody–" Franz began, the pure-white crystal catching his attention with its flickering light. But he was cut off in mid-curse by a yelp from Amelia, who was finding that she really should have had a backup plan, perhaps labelled 'In Case of Hostile Cyclops Being Turned to Living Rock by That Blasted Summoner'. For an agonised second, he twitched between the two, paralysed by uncertainty. At last duty resolved itself, and he sheathed his sword, dashing toward the Stone.

Two steps later, he pivoted on one armor-booted foot like an ice-skater and charged back the other way, silently deciding _Stuff duty,_ in the privacy of his thoughts. Amelia had been dodging brilliantly so far, unwilling to let go of her planted weapon but still capable of swinging out of the way of the Cyclops' unthinking assault. At last it had hit on the idea of hacking her and her lance right off its body with a guillotine axe-swing, and was winding up to do so.

As he ran, Franz drew the other sword he had brought, snapping it free of its scabbard with a flick that was probably edging towards the overdramatic. Amelia frowned at the thin, light blade, and was about to warn him not to take such an idiotic risk when she noticed that it gleamed much, much more than any sword had a right to. Her mental description had been very literally right.

Franz leapt and the Light Brand blazed with fierce magic, leaving an afterimage arc in its trail as he brought the weapon down in an overhead slash – the only proper description of the sound was unfortunately centuries away from Magvel; it was like listening to a circular saw carve through a city block's worth of power transformers – and one giant stone hand fell to the ground, its wrist red-hot and smoking. It still clutched the axe.

The Cyclops stared in disbelief. So did Franz. Amelia was the only one with the sense to take advantage of the moment, bracing her feet against the monster's chest and wrenching her lance out again. She fell, of course, and her landing was less than catlike, but a roll and an ache later, the recruit was up and ready for another go.

The paladin turned to catch her eye and grinned, trying to cover his own shock with an amused confidence that she would have to make sure didn't grow too fast. "See? Chopping stuff off almost always defuses the–"

"Duck," said Amelia.

"Defuses the duck? What would that even mean?" At which point the Cyclops used its blunted arm to lay him out flat on the cavern floor. Luckily, his shield had absorbed much of the blow, but already they had bigger problems to worry about.

Spikes had shifted aside and a hole had opened in the far wall of the cavern, revealing a small space suitable for a spectator who thought monster-duelling should be a professional sport. It was empty now, and a black-robed man stood in the centre of the floor, holding the Sacred Stone aloft.

"At last!" Arnord exulted. "Mine at last! The power greater than even the Demon King and his armies, held in my hand!"

The world seemed to hold its breath. There was nothing but the deep stillness of the cave and the shifting pure light of the Stone.

"So…" Amelia asked eventually, "are you going to _do_ anything with it, or what?"

Arnord glared at her. "What? …Impudent brat!" Still he looked uncomfortably at the Stone, apparently realising that he didn't actually know how to harness its power into a terrible lance of retribution to incinerate her on the spot. Something of an oversight, yes, but he was still the one with the magically-improved Cyclops on his side, rumbling up behind the child-knights with a sound… disturbingly like hoofbeats…

Not needing a warning, Arnord did duck, and so Sieglinde swept over his head as Eirika rode past, again mounted on the horse she could summon with the Lunar Brace. She looked irritated, and was bleeding from a shallow scratch across one leg. The spike banks made for good hiding places in a dark room, but they were anything other than comfortable.

"Princess, we still have to get the General's head back!" Franz reminded her.

"It was only going to be a warning decapitation," she snarled, riding back up to the summoner more slowly, the mythic Sword of Thunder at the ready. "There. You've got the Stone. Now tell me where the rest of Seth is and I might not thrash you too badly before I take it back."

The summoner only smirked. "Of all the times to make demands, the worst _must_ be just after you give up all your bargaining chips."

"I've got one left and it's _very sharp_."

"Well then, if you want your precious Seth's head, you may feel free to take it," said Arnord, pointing over Eirika's shoulder. She half-turned her mount to keep the summoner in view while she looked, but the only thing he seemed to be pointing at was… an iron box, chained firmly around the Cyclops' waist, with the belt that she had sometimes seen such monsters decorate with various skulls. This dark mage had a really sick sense of humour. Of course, he also had an excellent sense of timing, waiting until the princess was slowed by maximum revulsion.

Arnord moved with unexpected speed, slipping the Stone into a hidden pocket with one hand while casting a volley of six spiralling dark orbs at the cave wall – a Luna spell. He ran after the magical blast, leaving a quickly-summoned phantom in his wake, and as Eirika urged her horse into smashing it with a hoof to the helm, she couldn't imagine what he was thinking.

That became much clearer as the Luna magic carved into the stone like a hot wyvern through butter, digging an escape tunnel that the summoner charged through just second later. Furious, Eirika followed at a gallop, with Franz and Amelia lagging behind, mountless. The princess quickly emerged into bright sunlight, and then equally quickly found herself flooded from above; the tunnel led out underneath the waterfall. Sputtering and futilely shaking her hair out of her eyes, Eirika directed the horse out to dry ground, where she caught sight of Arnord again. He clung to another phantom, which was using its inhuman strength to quickly scale the cliff wall.

Franz and Amelia followed her into the open air again, but the Cyclops was far too massive to fit through the tunnel. It solved the problem in its usual way, by bashing through the relatively thin rock wall encasing its cave. Eirika looked oddly vindicated.

"Hah! I told you there's always a secret passage behind the waterfall," she said.

"I'm not sure this counts–" said Franz, who was having the sort of day that involved getting cut off a lot.

"Look: waterfall, door. Everything else is semantics. Now how do we get up this cliff, and how do we kill that thing?" The stone Cyclops had stumbled into the pool that fed into the river and instantly sunk to the bottom, but as it didn't need air or much anything else, it was hauling itself out without trouble.

"What, at the same time?" Franz balked.

"It'd be nice," the princess agreed.

"That's practically sheer stone," the paladin pointed out. "Not the best place for fencing footwork. And without phantom strength, I don't see how we can climb… oh." He caught sight of Amelia, already scrabbling to the second level of branches on a nearby tree.

"Were you _ever_ a kid?" she asked briefly, and resumed her ascent. The forest was old, and sturdy cedars grew close to the cliff wall, with sturdy branches inviting a brave fool to test their luck. All Eirika had to see was the tail of Arnord's cloak vanish over the top and she had dismissed her horse back to the Lunar bracelet, already running for the nearest tree. Franz wondered if he should stay behind to hold back the Cyclops, but he had already been lucky too often to count on it much longer.

Though Amelia had a head start, what Sergeant Faval had referred to as her 'altitudinal deficit' meant that the taller and fiercely motivated princess reached the top first, flinging herself out through open space for a frozen moment before she got hold of the ground again, landing on all fours. Arnord watched her impassively from the top of a rocky heap, still cradling the Sacred Stone. He flicked a finger and the phantom that had carried him up the cliff charged.

Eirika wasn't worried by a mere phantom, until she noticed the bizarre shape of its axe and the blood-stained glow that shone in its etchings. A Swordslayer – blasted summoner had managed to conjure up a Swordslayer! The princess shifted as quickly as she could into a defensive stance, sweeping and twisting as the wraith-warrior struck in a desperate attempt to parry the creature's attack. As usual, her rapier seemed to bounce off the Swordslayer's side, but the untalented phantom still overshot and buried its weapon in the ground.

She sidestepped around the spirit and slashed from behind, but without a spine to worry about, the phantom merely rotated its torso a full hundred-eighty degrees and batted the cut aside carelessly, shoving ahead and smacking Eirika off her feet with the mostly blunt top of its axe. The upper corner of its curving edge still gouged into her flesh, and from further unwanted experience, she knew that the weapon's magic would keep that wound bleeding for a very long time.

The phantom advanced, apparently enjoying Eirika's shudder every time it made an inhuman twist. Though the wraith's legs carried it forward in an ordinary line, its torso spun and swayed like reeds on a top, weaving the enchanted axe through endless orbiting crescents. The princess retreated as slowly as possible, never trying to block these wild slashes, merely waiting until it got overconfident and made a tactical mistake… like that one.

Apparently hoping for surprise, the phantom changed direction several times in a few seconds, swinging its axe like a mere fencer's foil. Most warriors would have been terrified, knowing how heavy and unwieldy Swordslayers were, but the spine thing had desensitised Eirika to creepiness. She brought her rapier in with an overhand thrust, tip pointing down, and wedged it into one of the wicked axe's many nooks. She pushed harder, keeping their blades locked, until the phantom had essentially been nailed to the ground by its weapon. Princess and wraith faced off, eyes just inches apart.

The phantom exploded. Its axe disintegrated with the rest of it, and Eirika stumbled off-balance for a moment, coughing in what she dearly hoped was smoke and not Essence of Undeath. Franz was still holding his Light Brand out when the arcane dust had vanished, but he aimed it now at Arnord instead of the unfortunate phantom. "I'd say something awesome right now, only I'm absolutely exhausted, so give us the Stone and the rest of Seth and I might not blow your Light-forsaken head off."

"A tip, boy," said Arnord. "Don't tell your enemies when you're exhausted." With a shove he hurled a Flux spell through the air – its only sign was a shadow racing across the ground, too fast to be dodged, before it erupted as Franz's feet and slammed him from all sides with oceanic pressure. "Lucky for you I'm not a murderer." Arnord skipped lightly to the bottom of the heap, brushing his robes off and looking up just in time to blast the charging princess with Luna.

Six flashes of light later, a few formless shreds of dark magic earthed themselves in the ground and burned the grass brown. Sieglinde gleamed brilliantly in the sunlight, and even Arnord had to admit it looked good in Eirika's grasp. Its penchant for cutting apart his spells, however, wasn't so much a selling point. Things might have gone very badly for the summoner just then if she hadn't been smashed off her feet by a meteoritic recruit, hurled by the mountain-skinned Cyclops finally joining them at the cliff top.

Wondering if he would ever breathe normally again, Franz was nevertheless the first to his feet, and first to take stock of the damage they had so far managed to inflict on the behemoth. A hole in its eye that didn't seem to make any difference. One hand missing and charred black, thank you very much, a crater in its chest from Amelia's lance, a new one in its bicep, and a handful of shallow gashes that seemed to be slowly leaking a dark fluid. Aside from that, there didn't seem to be anything–

With life-saving instinct, Franz leapt frantically to the side when the Cyclops swung at him with its intact arm, though it was still twenty or thirty feet away. When its fist ground a trench into the earth where he had been standing, Franz saved the thanks to the Light for later, preferring right not to recoil in shock at its arm. From the minor injury inflicted in its upper arm by Amelia, who had managed to spar with the monster even as she clambered up a tree, a hundred minor fractures ran out through the stone, and when it punched, they stretched wide. Its arm was held together only by the thick black sludge that trickled from its other injuries, but clearly the Cyclops had found a way to use that to its advantage.

The arm retracted, snapping back into place perfectly. Eirika and Amelia had seen the same freakish attack, and warily moved to help Franz in surrounding it, while Arnord quickly retreated out of the soon-to-be-chaotic battlefield.

"Okay," said Amelia. "Anyone got ideas on how we can use its lack of depth perception?"

"It has a _hole_ in its _eye_," Franz reminded her.

"Right. Probably _not_ a normal Cyclops," she decided. "Well, maybe–"

"Franz, keep it from retreating!" Eirika commanded, apparently deciding to Take Command. "Amelia, charge it from the side, keep that arm busy!" Duty having reasserted itself over the screaming mob of Franz's emotions, he managed to obey and hold his ground as Amelia came in on the Cyclops' right. It swung its arm in a great vertical arc, like a revenant swatting a fly, but with her newly typical agility, the recruit rolled out of the way, used her lance to vault over its arm a second later, and tried to smash its knuckles.

Though that failed, Eirika had the Thunder Blade and a much clearer path on the Cyclops' left where she stayed below and outside the flailing range of its broken arm. That limited her options, but Sieglinde's long, wind-thin tip easily lashed out under its arm and hacked through the giant's leg, taking advantage of Amelia's first, shallow strike. The princess was dismayed to see that the black core-sludge within the Cyclops was as impossible to sever as a rushing river, though she got its attention and had to flee another meteor-slap when its arm retracted.

"We really should have just hanged Rennac when we had the chance," said Franz, who was still standing firm where Eirika darted to safety. "Wouldn't have got us much, but at least we wouldn't have been trapped so many times."

"I'm still giving the rat a chance to redeem himself," the princess replied. "He might have a plan. When we were in the tunnel underground, the one that turned out to be full of spikes, he was pretty pointed about letting me see that embroidery on his jacket."

"A phoenix, right?" Franz recalled.

"Normally," Eirika agreed. "But he was wearing the fake. The pony that he used to trick Colm when they were having that thieving competition."

"What does that mean?" the paladin asked.

"I have no earthly idea," said Eirika. Amelia was keeping up her distracting tactics, and the Cyclops was still enjoying its new long-range attack. Swing up high, 'throw' its hand out to hammer the ground, let it snap back into place, swing, throw, hammer, snap, swing, throw…

She got an idea, and ran again. _Swing_, and even as Amelia dug her lance into the ground to pole-vault away, Eirika was running to take her place. _Throw_, and the princess barely sidestepped in time to avoid the hand, which nearly shook her off her feet when it hit the ground – _hammer_ – and Eirika hopped onto it, trying desperately to keep her balance in the crags of its fingers. _Snap_, and with a shove at the right moment, the hand was like a launching pad, catapulting Eirika at its face Sieglinde-first.

The Sacred Twin seemed to sing a chord on contact with the Cyclops, which had tried to lean out of the way but had little success. The flash of blue and golden lightning from Eirika's sword was followed by a soft shower, or perhaps a snowstorm, as the burning dust and ashes that had comprised its stone eye drifted down around her. The Cyclops bellowed its frustration, but then crumpled to the ground, as if paralysed by its blindness.

"_Now_ are we done?" Amelia asked, hopefully, in the new silence.

"That depends," Eirika admitted, carefully cutting the Cyclops' chain-belt with Sieglinde and passing the lockbox to Franz, who could usually be depended on to bring keys. She turned around in a slow circle to address the entire cliff-side field. "_Arnord!_ We can have some stupid one-on-one duel if you really want, but I think it's clear that you'd get flensed, so why not…" She trailed off, catching sight of four figures near the edge of the precipice. "…Franz, Seth's head _is_ in there, right?"

"Yes, milady," he reported, unwrapping the fabric it had been packed in. "I think some of his hair fractured, but otherwise he's in good condition."

"Nevertheless," Arnord stated smugly, "I think you've proportionally lost out on this one." Beside him were both of his phantoms, who had clearly just performed another heavy-lifting task. Between them was a kneeling stone paladin, missing its head. They had taken Seth's body from the cart, meaning that Eirikia had one-twentieth of the general, and Arnord had the other nineteen. One of the phantoms waved its axe at them cheerfully.

"Don't you ever get _bored?_" Eirika demanded furiously.

"Having too much time on his hands is probably the problem to start with," Amelia suggested.

"Your Cyclops is down, don't bother trying to scare us with phantoms," the princess snapped at him. "Even you can't call up Swordslayers and killer axes _that_ often."

"That is unfortunately true," Arnord agreed, raising a finger thoughtfully. "…But irrelevant." The finger snapped down and the two phantoms charged, while Arnord drew a circle of light in the air before him, indicating a triple-powered spell being cast.

Franz and Amelia shifted to intercept the phantoms, while Eirika moved for Arnord. Technically, Amelia should have been at a greater disadvantage, as lances always are against axe-wielders, but Franz was slower, seeing something odd about his foe as it approached. Where the phantom's helmet opened, usually revealing shaped shadows and glowing yellow eyes, this one appeared to be wearing a facemask or bandanna. Apparently its sight wasn't blocked, but Franz easily parried the heavy blow and leaned in to take a closer look.

A swatch of leather had been fastened in place of its usual visor. On it, gleaming golden threads outlined a phoenix, wings extended, tail trailing through the sky. Franz almost laughed as he chopped into the phantom's axe with his Light Brand, wrenched it out of his foe's hands and cast both weapons aside, preferring to fight this one with fists alone. Until he found out what it was for, he wasn't about to destroy it.

Eirika danced around the dark blasts that erupted around her and rocketed past as Arnord threw spell after spell at her, but with the arcane powers that seeped into all mages over time, he was just fast enough to dodge Sieglinde's blade every time, as well. The standoff continued even with Arnord's increasing distraction; he kept looking at the Cyclops, seeming to wonder why it refused to move.

At last Eirika twisted, thrust, began to sink her blade into him, and when Sieglinde cut, it burned with light again. The summoner shrieked with pain and grabbed Eirika by the neck, matching her sacred might with the elder power of Nosferatu. Even as the blade cut, the summoner sealed his wound with her life force. When Sieglinde burned brighter, the swirling darkness intensified in turn, until Eirika reached into his pocket with her other hand and took back the Sacred Stone. It overloaded the circuit and a shockwave shoved the two apart, sending them rolling on the grass. Arnord staggered back to his feet faster; Eirika had been doubly drained by the energy her sword demanded to maintain its power.

"_Go_ _already_!" Arnord roared at the behemoth, fumbling in one of his pockets. "Crush them, break them, kill them however you want, just _move!_" With that, he triumphantly produced something from his robes and held it overhead, his hand nearly crushing his monster-enslaving talisman in his rage.

_Crunch,_ said the little bottle, which wasn't a talisman, but _was_ full of a clear, yellow-green fluid that sluiced down his arm from the broken glass. With that, the Cyclops did move, leaping immediately to its feet and sniffing the air with mad intensity. It picked out the scent quickly and charged, using its one good arm to propel it faster toward Arnord, who realised absently that he was standing closer to the cliff than he should. His desperate gaze fell on Rennac, sitting at the bottom of the rock pile and dangling his talisman.

"You know, I never liked you," the rogue informed him.

The Cyclops hit him then, but was barely aware of the impact, and soon both of them were much more concerned with their expeditious plummet toward the distant ground.

After a brief glance over the edge, Rennac moved quickly, leaving the weakened princess to stare at the broken pile of stones that would serve as Arnord's cairn. The Cyclops' ichor leaked out of the debris, trickling away to merge with the pure waterfall pool, where it caught fire and burned to nothing.

Nodding to Amelia, still frozen in shock in the pose of someone running a phantom through – minus, of course, the long-gone phantom – Rennac flipped out a dagger and stabbed Franz's opponent in the heart-ish region, made much easier by the way the paladin was currently knotting his enemy's arms behind its back. When the phantom disintegrated, one thing was left intact – a flash of some mystery mixture that had been hidden in the wraith's head, with his phoenix embroidery wrapped around it. He caught it before it could fall, and trotted off to the petrified paladin.

"…What?" asked Eirika. It was a good question, partly because it was short enough for her brain to deal with at a time like this. The entire world seemed to be gently reverberating.

"Where should I start?" he countered, now searching for Seth's head in the grass.

She tried again. "What?"

"That was the bit you've been waiting for," Rennac said, mercifully not dragging it out any longer. "The one I've been waiting for, too. I've always hated him. Anyway, starting from the pained admission that I can't actually get away with whatever I want, keep in mind that I had to be subtle if I wanted to pull this whole thing off. Most of it has just been about getting you to go along with his plans, you realise."

"Because you're a controlling jerk and apprentice puppet-master?" Eirika guessed. The easiest ability to get back, after 'what', was Rennac-abusing.

"Do you see that speck in the sky?" the rogue asked, indicating a distant, miniscule shadow over the horizon.

"Yes."

"Keep watching. Now, this orange stuff here," he went on, "is Rockbinder potion, which my insane uncle had brewed up in case his Cyclops ever needed patching, but it ought to work equally well on that lonely neck over there. That phantom that Franz was holding off was _meant_ to be full of synthetic Smashpetal extract." Rennac glanced at all three Renais warriors to make sure they were properly baffled. "It was a rare plant with a fragrance that sent Cyclopes into a berserk rage, hence the name and the fact that it doesn't grow wild any more."

"I'm guessing that was what Arnord accidentally drenched himself with?" Amelia interjected.

"That's the stuff. He'd have noticed if I tried to just walk off with anything strongly enchanted – he was always able to sense magic objects – so I did a little switcharound. Take the Smashpetal oil, replace it with the Rockbinder I was _supposed_ to be carrying, then swap the nectar for the amulet and the result is what you saw, achieved with my usual brilliance–"

"That speck just _flapped_," said Eirika, leaping to her feet.

"Well, Seth only has a few petrified hours left," Rennac said. "Oh, by the way, you owe me again, since if I _hadn't_ sent one of my uncle's mercenary messengers to Caer Pelyn, Myrrh wouldn't be bringing Saleh here as we speak to make this Rockbinder stuff work. It requires healing staves and such."

"I owe you?" Eirika repeated. "Well, what did Arnord promise you for betraying us?"

The rogue's face instantly darkened to something more appropriate on a stormy midnight. "We don't need to go into that."

"All right," the princess relented. "But I could probably help if it had anything to do with Princess L'Arachel–"

"_NO!_ No, it did not! I'm amazed you would think so! That's the most ridiculous…" He stopped and composed himself. "Nothing of the kind. Now, can we just get Seth repaired and go back to Renais so I can bask in some proper adulation?"

* * *

What Franz found curious was that of all the people at Renais Castle, Seth seemed to think there was the least to celebrate, despite being the man with the most to be grateful for, decapitation-wise. He was silent on the journey back, which Eirika instructed them all to allow, considering what he had endured, but Franz considered this paladin business. Amelia readily slipped out the cart's window to ride on the roof and prod Rennac about L'Arachel, leaving Franz free for friendly interrogation.

"Sir," he said, a greeting that doubled as a useful prompt. It made a space that needed filling.

"That armor looks good on you," Seth said eventually. "I understand you performed brilliantly in my absence."

"_That's_ not what's bothering you, is it? I'm only as good as I am, whatever that might be, through your training," he said. Seth remained hunched against the wall, looking quite literally beaten. "…But that's _not_ it. Isn't everything just fine? We have the Stone, you're alive, and now you and the princess…" At that, Seth did look up, not sharply, but with a hint of venom in his eyes. It was the sort of glare that preceded a declaration of '_You dare to presume?_'

The moment collapsed like cardboard under a Cyclops. "No."

Franz was confounded. 'No' never left room to argue. He tried a different angle. "It's good to see Amelia again. She's been gone for ages."

"Yes," Seth agreed. "You and she will make great knights before long. I can already imagine the kind of victories you'll achieve, the legends the people of Renais will tell for generations."

"I bet you can," Franz said with a grin. "Impossible quests, unavoidable peril, unconquerable odds… We won't save the kingdom single-handedly, of course, but it'll matter that we're out there. Renais will be better for whatever we can manage." He watched Seth very closely. "Good thing she's not royalty, or none of it would ever happen."

"Will you _cease_ your unsubtle hinting?" Seth requested darkly. "I will not cast aside my duty to the monarchy."

"But it's the same thing! Aren't you old enough to get it by now? There are only four things in the world: right, wrong, what we want, and what we don't. You can't spin them or flip them until they turn into something else. I love Amelia. It's been hard to get this far and I'm only seventeen – but I know what I want, and I know what's right, and that's why everything you imagine is going to be true. And you and I are a whole lot alike; we're just… flipped, or something. Reflections. Symmetrical. But those four things are what they are no matter how you turn it."

"There are greater things than what we want," said Seth, demanding an end to words.

Franz sighed, stood, and went to look out the cart window. Before he leaned through, he looked back at the shadow-wrapped paladin again. "That duty of yours, it's to follow whatever course the monarchy wishes, isn't it?"

"No matter the personal cost," Seth agreed, meaningfully.

"Have you checked what those wishes are, lately?" he asked, and half-emerged into the sun.

* * *

That same summer sun was on its way to setting when they reached Renais Castle, where Franz hoped to see some change in the general. But upon their arrival he only spoke briefly with Kyle – who seemed to be convinced he was in danger of 'relapse' and kept stretching all his joints to keep them from turning to stone – before vanishing into his quarters for hours.

Every other inhabitant, however, seemed to emerge from petrifaction with gratitude and up to two days' worth of pent-up energy. Saleh roamed the halls with a Restore staff, joined by Artur and Lute once they were properly turned back into flesh, blood, faith, and know-it-all-ness, and the castle grew ever louder in their wake. Rather than giving endless explanations, the sages just instructed everyone to gather in the throne room, where Eirika, Franz, and Amelia answered all the questions they could.

What the young knights couldn't help noticing was that their princess seemed to keep leaving out the more dramatic aspects concerning herself and Seth, and they were pretty sure she was trying to avoid mentioning the Sacred Stone too often, either. Amelia tried making up for this by quietly informing anyone she could of just what amazing bravery had led to the general's capture, and soon that spread through the growing crowd as well.

So it was understandable that a ripple of quiet spread through the hall, centring on Seth as he calmly made his way through the throng, apparently in no hurry to reach the princess. The crowd, with predictable telepathy, parted like a sea normally doesn't, to leave him a clear, straight path that the Silver Knight reluctantly followed until he stood, perfectly straight and military, before Eirika. Franz was perhaps the last to notice what was going on, far too wrapped up in the destruction of the dark Gorgon, and his armored boot went _clang_ as Amelia attempted to stomp it again.

"General Seth, it's good to see you up," said Eirika, obviously amused by the formality of her own words, and the paladin's stance.

"I have a request, milady," said Seth.

"Good," the princess said. "It's traditional, of course, when you save the princess's life."

"I would like to apply for immediate transfer to the Knights of Frelia."

The few whispered conversations that had been growing in the quiet were thoroughly obliterated.

"_THE HELL?_" Eirika belatedly realised that this wasn't quite princessly behaviour. Immediately after that, she realised that while there were many people who might have cared, she wasn't one of them. "_What_ are you…" She heard her own voice and took a deep, steadying breath. "Explain."

"Here in Renais there are complicating factors that keep me from performing my duty with proper detachment and efficiency. I believe I will be of greater benefit in Frelia, where the military command was largely slain in the last war," Seth replied, with the sturdy calm of a dam holding back a turbulent river.

"I don't want you to go. And your duty is what I say it is," Eirika stated.

"So I have been reminded," Seth acknowledged. "But that would nevertheless be a betrayal of the oath I first swore upon entering the knights. There is no escape except transfer. I will await your approval of my application." He saluted, pivoted with slick precision, and strode back toward the court doors.

Those doors slammed open as Seth approached, and the paladin was driven backwards, rather hastily, by a quickly advancing figure whose long, black cape billowed behind him with every relentless step. A battalion of cavaliers stood ready in the hall outside, and two followed him in to flank the door.

"General Seth, I _order_ you to marry my sister!" King Ephraim bellowed. He paced Seth back until the paladin had been forced to climb the steps to the twin thrones, at which point Ephraim spun to face the crowd, with less precision than Seth but a great deal more flair. "Well, what are all of you doing here? Are we having a celebration of some kind? It could become annual. We'll call it Flexible Day."

Franz broke the stunned silence with a snort of laughter that dissolved quickly into stifled chortling. Ephraim's arm whipped up and gained the sort of attention usually only given to deadly weapons as it pointed to him, then Amelia.

"As for _you_ two – immediate promotion to… Knight-Sergeant and Knight-Lieutenant. I'm sorry, it's an age thing," he told the recruit. "You'll catch up after your next birthday." Still looking stern and obviously enjoying himself too much, her surveyed the crowd. "You're still just _standing_ there. What is it?" He looked back and saw that Seth and Eirika were still irritatingly not attached at the lips. "Is there a problem?"

"Um, milord, I have applied–" Seth began.

"Yeah, I heard about that. _Denied_. Go pick out a ring."

Eirika saw the face of rescue running through the crowd, hastily trying to put her blue hair back into a ponytail. "Tana, what _happened_? Did you let him have sugar or something?"

All proper and innocent, the Queen looked up at Ephraim on the throne dais. "Is there a problem, milord?"

"Not at all, milady," he assured her. "Today is a _fantastic_ day to be king."

"So much for rescue," Eirika muttered. She had a prickling feeling on the back of her neck, as though, somewhere, hundreds of people were watching her expectantly. There really was no escape. And as she turned to Seth, she saw again the look in his eyes that had last been there just moments before the Gorgon attacked. The look of someone who has taken a battering ram to their emotional barricades.

Possibly the entire castle joined in the cheer as princess and knight kissed at last. Because he was in that kind of mood, Ephraim didn't bother asking for quiet, but merely shouted over the jubilant tumult. "Now, before we do get down to proper celebration, does _anyone_ know why there's an _army_ on my lawn?"


End file.
